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Introducing the Automate SDK! Get your entire test suite running on BrowserStack in minutes! Learn More.
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Integrate Your Test Suite

Integrate BrowserStack into your test suite using the BrowserStack Node SDK — a plug-and-play solution that takes care of all the integration steps for you!

Prerequisites

  • An existing automated test suite.
  • Node v12+ installed on your machine.

Looking for a starter project? Get started with our CodeceptJS sample project.

Integration steps

Install BrowserStack Node SDK

Install the BrowserStack SDK using npm for your JestJS based test suite for plug-and-play integration with BrowserStack.

The npx setup command generates a browserstack.yml file at the root location of your project with your access credentials already configured. It also adds new command(s) in your package.json file to run tests on BrowserStack.

You can also set your credentials using the environment variables BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME and BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY.

Configure your browserstack.yml file

The auto-generated browserstack.yml file situated in the root location of your project holds all the required settings to run tests on BrowserStack.

Set platforms to test on

Set the browsers and devices you want to test under the platforms object. Our config follows W3C formatted capabilities.

Parallel thread #1
Parallel thread #2
Parallel thread #3

Do you want to dynamically configure platforms?

To dynamically configure platforms across different tests, you can comment out the platforms capability while still passing platform-specific capabilities.

Set number of parallel threads per platform

The parallelsPerPlatform property determines the number of parallel threads to be executed. BrowserStack’s SDK runner selects the best strategy based on the configured value.

Example 1: If you have configured 3 platforms and set parallelsPerPlatform as 2: a total of 6 (3 x 2) parallel threads are used on BrowserStack.

Example 2: If you have configured 1 platform and set parallelsPerPlatform as 15: a total of 15 (1 x 15) parallel threads are used on BrowserStack.

Do you want to perform cross-browser testing without test level parallelization?

Remove the parallelsPerPlatform capability from the configuration file.

Do you want to test parallelization without performing cross-browser testing?

Remove or comment out the platform capability while keeping the parallelsPerPlatform capability intact in the configuration file.

Do you want to skip cross-browser testing as well as parallelization?

Remove or comment out the platform and parallelsPerPlatform capabilities from the configuration file.

Configure BrowserStack Local

Test localhost / internal servers in your network

True
False
Test Localhost / Staging websites that are not publicly accessible

BrowserStack’s Local Testing feature connects with test suites pointing to your localhost URL

Learn more

If your staging environment is behind a proxy or firewall, you need to set additional arguments, such as proxy username, proxy password, etc. Check out Local Binary parameters to learn about additional arguments or Contact Support for assistance.

BrowserStack Reporting

You can leverage BrowserStack’s extensive reporting features using the following capabilities:

Build Name

Set a name to your build (usually the same as the build ID that’s on your CI/CD platform).
Accepted characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, ., :, -, [], /, @, &, ', _. All other characters are ignored.
Character limit: 255

buildIdentifier Description Generated build name on BrowserStack dashboard
${BUILD_NUMBER} (Default) If build is triggered locally, an incremental counter is appended.

If build is triggered with CI tools, CI generated build number is appended.
bstack-demo 1


bstack-demo CI 1395
${DATE_TIME} The timestamp of run time is appended to the build. bstack-demo 29-Nov-20:44

Advanced use cases for Build name

Custom formatting of build name

Prefix buildIdentifier with desired characters, for example, # or :

buildName: bstack-demo
buildIdentifier: '#${BUILD_NUMBER}'

Re-run tests in a build

You can re-run selected tests from a build using any of the following options:

Option 1: Set the existing build name in the BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME variable and prepend it to your test run command to re-run tests in the same build:

MacOS/Linux:

BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME="bstack-demo 123" npm run sample-test

Windows Powershell:

$env:BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME=“bstack-demo 123”; npm run sample-test

Windows cmd:

set BROWSERSTACK_BUILD_NAME=“bstack-demo 123” && npm run sample-test


Option 2: Set the build name as a combination of buildName and buildIdentifier, as seen on the dashboard, and set buildIdenitifier as null:

buildName: bstack-demo 123
buildIdentifier: null


Option 3: Set the buildIdentifier as the build number or time of the required build as seen on the dashboard:

buildName: bstack-demo
buildIdentifier: 123


Project Name

Set a project name for your project.

Do you want to enable/disable auto-marking of test status and session?

The sessionName and sessionStatus are the names of your test sessions and status of your test sessions respectively. They are automatically picked from your test class/spec names and statuses. They do not need to be set manually when using the BrowserStack SDK. To override the sessionName and sessionStatus capabilities, use the following in your browserstack.yml file:

You can configure local testing to start without initializing the BrowserStack binary, or even with an existing binary using a local identifier

testContextOptions:
    skipSessionName: true
    skipSessionStatus: true

Use additional debugging features

By default, BrowserStack provides prettified session logs, screenshots on every failed selenium command, and a video of the entire test. Additionally, you can enable the following features:

Test Observability

Enables Test Observability, an advanced test reporting and debugging tool that helps you analyze test failures dramatically faster. If enabled, Test Observability collects test data using the SDK. This capability is enabled (set to true) by default.

True
False
Network logs

Enables network capture for the session in HAR format. Reduces session performance slightly

True
False

Use Percy Visual Testing

Percy is an all-in-one visual testing and review platform enabling teams to automate visual tests, detect visual bugs, and provide valuable insights into UI changes.

Percy Visual Testing

Enable visual testing to automatically identify and highlight visual UI changes.

Note: Using Percy to perform Visual testing affects the performance of your Automate tests.

True
False

percyCaptureMode takes effect only if you set percy to true. If you set the capture mode to manual, ensure you use the Percy Screenshot function in your test script.

Update BrowserStack Config file

Copy the given config into your browserstack.yml file.

Copy icon Copy

Use our Capability Generator to select from a comprehensive set of options you can use to customize your tests.

Run your test suite on BrowserStack

Your test suite is now ready to run on BrowserStack! Run the commands added under the scripts property section in the package.json file. Here is an example command:

If you don’t see any new commands, make sure you ran npx setup correctly or contact support for assistance.


To find out the location of the BrowserStack SDK log files, refer to BrowserStack SDK Log Files. If you are looking for more information, see FAQ documentation.

After you run your test, visit the Automate dashboard to view your test results.

Advanced features and use cases

Here’s a list of features and capabilities that you might find useful:

Accept insecure certificates

The acceptInsecureCerts capability suppresses browser popups warning about self-signed certificates usually found in staging environments.

Capability Expected values
acceptInsecureCerts A boolean. Default is False.
True if you want to accept all SSL certificates.
browserstack.yml

Change desktop resolution

The resolution capability changes the default desktop screen resolution for your tests on BrowserStack infrastructure.

Capability Description Expected values
resolution Set the resolution of your VM before beginning your test A string. Default resolution is 1024x768

Supported resolutions:
Windows (XP): 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1920x1080, 2048x1536, 2560x1600, and 2560x1920

Windows (7): 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1920x1080, 2048x1536, 2560x1600, 2560x1920, and 3840x2160

Windows (8, 8.1, 10, 11): 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1200, 1920x1080, 2048x1536, 2560x1600, 2560x1920, and 3840x2160

OS X (Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, and High Sierra): 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 2560x1600, and 3840x2160

OS X (All other versions): 1024x768, 1280x960, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, and 1920x1080
browserstack.yml

Adding root level or platform level capabilities

You can add any capability in the browserstack.yml file at the root level or platform level. Refer to the snippet for details.

browserstack.yml

Other use cases

Use the following additional links to documentation pages that might help with your test scenarios:

Next steps

Once you have successfully integrated your test suite with BrowserStack, you might want to check the following:

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