Integrate Your Test Suite with BrowserStack

Setup authentication

Set environment variables for BrowserStack credentials:

It is recommended that you store your credentials as environment variables and use those environment variables in your test script.

Update your test suite config file

Update your test cases to read BrowserStack credentials from environment variables and update the Selenium hub URL to the BrowserStack remote hub URL: https://hub-ft.browserstack.com/wd/hub

<appSettings>
    <add key="user" value="YOUR_USERNAME" />
    <add key="key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" />
    <add key="server" value="hub-ft.browserstack.com/wd/hub" />
</appSettings>

Migrate your test cases

After you set up authentication in your test scripts, you can now add configurations such as adding browser-OS combinations, test suite organization details, test status that you want to track, and then run your tests.

<!-- Set this in your App.config file -->
<configuration>
  <environments>
    <chrome>
      <add key="browserName" value="Chrome" />  
    </chrome>
  </environments>
</configuration>

a. Organize tests

<!-- Set these capabilities in your specflow config file -->
<configuration>  
  <capabilities>
    <parallel>
      <add key="buildName" value="browserstack-build-1" />
      <add key="sessionName" value="BStack parallel specflow" />
      <add key="projectName" value="bstack-demo" />
    </parallel>
  </capabilities>
</configuration>

Use the following capabilities for naming your tests and builds. This ensures effective debugging, test reporting, and build execution time analysis.

• Use a new buildName name every time you run your test cases. This ensures that sessions are logically grouped under a unique build name and helps you monitor the health of your test suite effectively.
  
  
• A build can only have a maximum of 1000 tests and post that a new build gets created with a -1 suffixed to the original build name.

b. Mark test as Passed or Failed

To mark whether your test has passed or failed on BrowserStack, use the JavaScript executor in your test script. You can mark a test as passed or failed based on your test assertions.

The arguments passed in the JavaScript method for setting the status and the corresponding reason of the test are status and reason:

• status accepts either passed or failed as the value.
• reason accepts a string value.

IJavaScriptExecutor jse = (IJavaScriptExecutor)driver;
JsonObject executorObject = new JsonObject();
JsonObject argumentsObject = new JsonObject();
argumentsObject.Add("status", status);
argumentsObject.Add("reason", reason);
executorObject.Add("action", "setSessionStatus");
executorObject.Add("arguments", argumentsObject);
jse.ExecuteScript("browserstack_executor: "  + executorObject.ToString());

c. Set up debugging capabilities

1. Enable visual logs and automatic screenshot capture at every Selenium command by setting the debug capability.

2. By default, Console Logs with log level errors are enabled. Utilize the consoleLogs capability to enable various log levels, including warnings, info, verbose, errors, and disable.

3. Capture the browser’s performance data, such as network traffic, latency, HTTP requests, and responses in a HAR format, by setting the networkLogs capability.

<!-- test-script.cs -->
<configuration>  
  <capabilities>
    <parallel>
      <add key="buildName" value="browserstack-build-1" />
      <add key="sessionName" value="BStack parallel specflow" />
      <add key="debug" value="true" />
      <add key="consoleLogs" value="info" />
      <add key="networkLogs" value="true" />
    </parallel>
  </capabilities>
</configuration>

Connect your website under test

BrowserStack can integrate with test suites pointing to your localhost URL, staging environment, and even websites behind one or more proxies/firewalls.

Option 1 - Language bindings

a. Install the package

Install the BrowserStack Local binary by running the following command:

dotnet add package BrowserStackLocal

b. Set the Access Key and use available methods in your test script

Set the bsLocalArgs variable to your BrowserStack access key and use the following methods provided by the local library to manage your local connection:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using BrowserStack;

// Creates an instance of Local 
Local bsLocal = new Local();

// You can also set environment variables using "BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY".
var bsLocalArgs = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>
{
    new KeyValuePair<string, string>("key", "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY")
};

// Starts the Local instance with the required arguments.
bsLocal.start(bsLocalArgs);

// Checks if BrowserStack local instance is running.
Console.WriteLine(bsLocal.isRunning());

// Your test script should start executing after the bsLocal has started.

// Stop the Local instance after your tests are completed.
bsLocal.stop();

c. Add desired capabilities to enable browserstack.local

Copy and set the browserstack.local capability to true. You may face errors running your test script if any other capability is enabled before setting up BrowserStack Local.

<!-- App.config -->
<configuration>
  <capabilities>
    <parallel>
      <add key="local" value="true" />
    </parallel>
  </capabilities>
</configuration>

Option 2 - CLI interface - Binary

a. Download BrowserStack Local

• Download for macOS (10.7+)
• Download for Windows (XP and above)
• Download for Linux (64 bit)
• Download for Linux (32 bit)

b. Unzip the Binary

Unzip the downloaded file and move it to a folder/directory from which you have permission to start it using your command line or terminal.

c. Run the Binary using your command line or terminal

Run the following command to initiate the BrowserStack Local connection:

# macOS or Linux
./BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

# Windows
BrowserStackLocal.exe --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

d. Set up config to enable browserstack.local

Copy the capabilities into your config file:

<!-- App.config -->
<configuration>
  <capabilities>
    <parallel>
      <add key="local" value="true" />
    </parallel>
  </capabilities>
</configuration>