Callback and Polling for Cypress tests

Learn how to run your tests in CI/CD successfully and get build status.

The CLI v1.6.0 and higher now supports both sync and async modes of running tests. The sync mode is the default mode that executes commands serially, while the async mode lets you execute tests modularly. You can set these modes as follows:

browserstack-cypress run --async

Running tests in async

Running your Cypress tests on BrowserStack is completely async until v1.6.0. We recommend that you upgrade to the latest CLI version. If your CLI version is v1.5.0 or lower, note the following:

1. Your CI/CD job will be automatically marked as success as the CLI exits with a success code, and doesn’t reflect the actual build status.
2. If you’re using Local testing, your Local connection might get closed after the command to run the tests is done executing.
3. If you configured to get build completion notifications from your CI, you will get a notification after test submission, and not after build completion.

Poll build status to handle build updates

The following sample script uses the build-info command through CLI at regular intervals to poll the status of the build. The build status is set to running when the build is running and is changed to done when the build is done running.

#!/bin/sh

# Get the build ID from the run command's output
BUILD_ID=$(browserstack-cypress run | grep 'build id:' | rev | cut -d" " -f1 | rev)

# Or, you can read this from the log/build_results.txt file as well

# Say, it takes around 60 seconds on an average to finish your tests
# You can wait for 60 seconds, and then start polling for build status every 10 seconds
BUILD_TIME_AVG=60
POLLING_INTERVAL=10
BUILD_STATUS="running"

$(sleep $BUILD_TIME_AVG)

while [ $BUILD_STATUS == "running" ]
do
  # Get the build status
  $(browserstack-cypress build-info $BUILD_ID > temp.txt)
  BUILD_STATUS=$(awk '/"status":/ {print $2} ' temp.txt | head -n1 | cut -d"," -f1 | cut -d"\"" -f2)
  $(rm temp.txt)

  # Sleep until next poll
  $(sleep $POLLING_INTERVAL)
done

Use callback URLs to get updates

Executing the run command with --async exits successfully when the test builds are successfully started on BrowserStack. Since the test execution is async in nature, you can use the callback feature to get updates as the build is running and after the build is complete.

You can use the callback_url key in the run_settings option in the browserstack.json file to get an update after that build is complete. The payload sent to this callback URL is the same as the one you get with the build-info BUILD_ID command, along with a text field that you can directly use as a message text in any communication tool such as, Slack, MS Teams, HipChat, etc.,

Get build completion updates on Slack & Microsoft Teams

You can create an app that can create incoming webhooks and use it in the run_settings configuration.

You can accept incoming webhooks in Slack, and then use it in the run_settings configuration as follows: Check out the Slack guide to configure incoming webhook. as follows:

{
  "run_settings": {
    ...
    "callback_url": "https://hooks.slack.com/TXXXXX/BXXXXX/XXXXXXXXXX",
    ...
  }
}

After every build completion (success or failure), a message is sent in your selected channel with your build name, project name, and a link to the test report for that build as follows: