Cloud testing is seen not just as a way to optimize an application before going into production, but also as a way to test the performance, availability and security of cloud-based infrastructures. However, despite the critical importance of automated testing, teams continue to struggle to maintain a high level of confidence in the quality and stability of their code. But Cypress cloud executes your tests in the environment they will run in during development and later on in production. This means that Cypress can simulate real user events, like clicks and keystrokes, against real page objects, like links and form inputs. Cypress uses Webdriver for this.
The popularity of Cypress cloud testing has been growing, as it provides an easy way for businesses to save time and money by using a cloud service provider. Cypress Cloud testing allows testers to use the pay as you go model to acquire any necessary resources, hardware or software needed for their test environment. This allows companies to avoid the need to commit cash up front or install resources that may not be necessary or used again at a later date.
Introduction to Cypress Cloud Testing
Cypress is an open-source and free testing framework for Node.js used as an alternative to Selenium or PhantomJS. One of its best features is that it runs your tests in real browsers thanks to Electron.
- This means they can use the same APIs as your application, and that it's easy to debug from the same environment as your application. Cypress also has pre-made end-to-end tests tailored around React and Redux apps which allows you to easily test components both on their own and together in a real browser without reloading with every action.
- Cypress provides features like snapshot testing, screenshot comparisons and time-travel debugging, which are useful when you need to troubleshoot a flaky test that keeps failing in the same way again and again. Cypress combines the speed of one-file unit tests with the power of real browsers and DOM inspector tools so that you can quickly debug why your tests are failing.
- It supports remote debugging from your code editor to run and debug tests. This allows you to set breakpoints and step through your test code. Cypress provides a mechanism for organizing multiple tests into suites and groups, and a command line interface that enables you to run tests.
Unlike Selenium, it does not require an agent running on the target machine. In addition to the framework, Cypress provides a test runner GUI and access to a command line interface for running commands from your terminal.
Features of Cypress Cloud Testing
Cypress lets you test work in progress on your local machine and securely access real browsers when you're ready to test public-facing features. The framework is designed to work with any unit testing framework. Use the framework to develop tests that integrate with your build system, test management, and deployment process via a simple command line interface.
1. Better Network Control and screenshots
Cypress makes it easier and faster to write, run, and debug end-to-end web tests. Cypress tests run on your computer, not your server. You can confidently make changes to your application knowing you won't break anything for users. Cypress saves test state between runs, re-executes failed tests and can be started/stopped at will – all from the REPL. Cypress does not slow down fast-changing front ends – it only re-executes what has changed.
2. Automatic Waiting and quick access to the results
As a Cypress test runs, it displays snapshots of your application's state where you can see exactly what happened at each step of the test. The snapshots are real DOM elements, too, so they look just like they do in your application's UI. Cypress mirrors these snapshots so you can interact with them as if they were part of the application itself. You can click around in them and use them to write commands and assertions that act directly on your app.
3. Simple results and quick debugging
Cypress uncovers the source of your bugs seamlessly. Their stack traces are human readable with backtraces and line numbers. Cypress automatically writes test code for you that verifies state, scrolls, fills in forms, clicks buttons, and basically does anything else you want to easily test. They combine the powers of a web browser, powerful developer APIs and a dashboard to create seamless software delivery. Cypress tests run within real browsers, making them fast and reliable. Tests are written as JavaScript code that looks exactly like the application code you're testing.
4. Error Detection and easy Orchestration
Cypress is a radically different approach to testing that combines the best of humans and machines seamlessly in a single toolchain. It offers a powerful API, full stack visibility, Flaky test detection and human focused reports as an alternative to out of date testing tools that focus on one part of the stack at a time. Cypress runs tests in real browsers, on real devices, or in headless Chrome - all from a single run.
Cypress is the first end-to-end testing solution that can run tests in real browsers. Cypress gives you complete control over the browser from within a Node.js program, and requires no browser plugins. It combines the ease of familiar tools like Selenium with powerful and flexible capabilities like headless Chrome. It provides you with everything you need to test your application.
You can perform cross browser testing with cloud based testing platforms such as LambdaTest. Using Cypress, you can run your first script on a variety of browsers, including Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and even Electron. LambdaTest is a continuous quality cloud platform that allows you perform manual and automated testing for websites and web applications across 3000+ real browsers, devices and OSes. With LambdaTest, you can use Cypress framework for testing web apps across 50+ browser versions.
Why is Cypress Cloud Testing Important?
Cypress Cloud Testing has several components. First, it is a headless Chrome browser that runs a website as a background process, giving you the power to run your tests inside the real browser. Second, Cypress runs on Node.js and works as both a CLI and GUI interface written in JavaScript and employs zero dependencies out of the box. Third, Cypress integrates with several leading testing frameworks like Mocha out of the box. Finally, Cypress integrates with some popular CI/CD systems, such as Bitbucket Pipelines, Travis CI, Jenkins, CircleCI and Gitlab CI. However, the main reasons why Cypress Cloud Testing is important are
1. Showing Periodic Network Requests
Cypress not only works with the back end but also it can be integrated with the Selenium WebDriver test to make testing the front end easier. The combination of Cypress and Selenium can function as a full-stack testing tool for web applications. The Command Log is a feature that is born to save your time! It allows you to use the recorded real-world browser events and replay them automatically in future tests.
This way, you can write and modify your test cases quicker than ever, finally allowing you to automate more manual tests, which previously required very complex code -- or not even possible at all! Leverage the power of Cypress' Command Log and spend less time writing tests, and more time for building valuable things for everyone!
2. Scalable and better performance
By open-sourcing their solution, Cypress augments its cloud offering by allowing customers to scale and augment coverage across various platforms in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional manual and virtual (software-based) solutions while ensuring that they are continually up-to-date with all the latest browser versions as they're being released.
As part of the solution, Cypress is also introducing new integrations between their platform and third-party developer tools from vendors including Sauce Labs, Perfecto and Jenkins. Cypress.io has built their cloud native and open platform around the goal of Shipping software with confidence. Cypress is a powerful and reliable testing platform that continuously integrates with your project as you develop it.
3. Simple Command Console with effective solutions
Cypress is different from traditional end-to-end testing frameworks because it runs tests within the application's browser environment. This means the developer can grab pieces of information from within their own development tool: the browser DevTools. Debugging browser tests is simple and easy with Cypress. The commands that you already use in your tests are now available as Cypress endpoints.
With the same API, you can both write tests and debug them. It is an open source test runner and framework for truly reliable JavaScript on your web page. It makes it effortless for developers to ensure their code runs as expected by generating fantastic visual reports. Cypress benefits professional developers by giving them an easy to use interface to interact with application components - click buttons, fill forms and send HTTP requests.
4. Quick Test results in the same window
Cypress executes the test commands synchronously. This means regardless of how long your application takes to respond to a test command, Cypress continues to wait until the application finishes handling it. If there’s an issue in your application code that prevents it from responding (whether because the data is invalid or the database is timing out), Cypress will attempt to re-run the same command again until it succeeds.
The built-in retries are a big reason Cypress tests tend to be more reliable because some of the testing flake is thus removed. Its tests run synchronously inside the browser, giving you confidence in browser behavior, without flake. Cypress also gives you an easy way to select elements on the page, eliminating the frustration of dealing with a selector engine.
5. Continuous Integration Services with simple results
Cypress tests are run in real browsers, not simulators, so it’s easy to debug from the code. Cypress automatically detects the current runtime and launches one instance of Chrome on each available browser — no additional configuration is required. Cypress has extensive built-in debugging and test control commands right in the Command Log that run both in Node and on the browser.
These commands allow you to view application state; inject messages, data, and even CSS; modify elements interactively; and much more. Cypress implements the "command pattern" test strategy by using commands in JavaScript or via URL arguments. The commands can start, write to console and DOM, accept user input, wait for certain browser events, and perform assertions.
6. Perfect Plugins
Cypress's built-in code coverage tracking looks at each unit test and then runs all of your tests against every line of JavaScript being tested so you can see exactly which parts of your app are being exercised. Cypress tests run the full test-suite, even re-running tests that fail, without any manual intervention from the developer. Tests that pass get a green checkmark badge on their captions and tests that fail get a red cross. The state of the tests is then reported in your terminal. Cypress also integrates with git for reporting code coverage, linting and reactively preventing failures during testing.
Cypress integrates with your editor so you can debug test failures and see the value of your test variables while debugging. As every Cypress test creates a new browser session, it is possible to compare the screenshots from the latest run to the previous one and check if there are any differences (the assertion feature). Tests can be made even faster with caching and parallelization features allowing multiple tests and page objects to run in parallel.
Final Thoughts
Test coverage has been a familiar metric in the software engineering community for a long time, with the goal being to make sure that every line of code, or at least most lines of code, are covered by a test. Cypress was designed to work with React applications, but it is possible to use it with other frameworks as well. Cypress testing is a one stop solution for interactive websites and web apps. Instead of having to manually mock out all interactions or spending time writing complicated tests, Cypress makes testing fast and fun. Cypress enables users to run their tests in the browser with zero configuration. It also provides real time updates from the test runner, with the capability of automatically pausing at any point while debugging/testing. When combined with Cypress's ability to make testing easy, this speeds up the development process, ultimately saving a lot of time.