Integrate your Selenium JavaScript tests with Percy
A guide to integrating your Selenium JavaScript automated tests with BrowserStack Percy. Catch visual differences in your web application on time.
Percy integrates with your tests using both Percy and BrowserStack SDK. To establish this integration, choose the appropriate SDK and refer to the following section accordingly:
You can integrate your tests using the BrowserStack SDK and manage browsers through Percy. Percy supports the latest versions of modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
Create Project
Create a Percy Web project using the Percy dashboard. Learn more.
Update your BrowserStack config file
-
In the browserstack.yml file, set
percy: true
. -
Set a
projectName
.
Use the sameprojectName
specified when creating the Percy Web Project. -
Set
browserstackAutomation: true
if it is currently set to false. -
Set
percyCaptureMode: manual
.
Currently, we do not support percyCaptureMode: auto
on Percy web project and using BrowserStack SDK.
Below sample browserstack.yml
file shows how to set the percy
, the projectName
, percyCaptureMode
and the browserstackAutomation
parameters.
Update your test script
To manually capture snapshot alongside the auto mode, implement the following steps in your test script:
- Import the BrowserStack Percy SDK in your test script.
- Add the
percy.snapshot(driver, name)
method at required points in your test script to get the snapshot you want.
Here’s an example:
Run your test script
Your script is ready to execute visual tests, and Percy is prepared to receive the build. After the tests runs, the snapshots are added to the same Percy project.
A build with the same project name and platform configuration mentioned in the BrowserStack config file appears on the Automate dashboard.
Percy SDK offers the following integrations for your JavaScript tests:
- Percy Web
- Percy with Automate
Choose Percy if you want to perform visual tests solely on the newest browsers. Choose Automate if you want to run visual tests on a range of desktop, mobile, and browser combinations.
To establish this integration, choose the appropriate variant and refer to the following section accordingly:
We recommend using our BrowserStack SDK for Percy integration.
Integrate Percy with your test suite to run visual tests. To do that, follow these steps:
Create a Percy project
Sign in to Percy. In Percy, create a project of the type, Web, and then name the project. After the project is created, Percy generates a token. Make a note of it. You have to use it set your environment variable in the next step.
For details on creating a project, see Create a Percy project.
Set the project token as an environment variable
Run the given command to set PERCY_TOKEN as an environment variable:
To learn about environment variables in Percy, see Percy environment variables.
Update your test script
Import the Percy library to use the method and attributes required to take screenshots.
In the following code, the percySnapshot
method is used:
We are passing the required argument which is name
, and are using an <https://example.com>
web application. JavaScript example
as the name of the snapshot within the percySnapshot
method.
The snapshot method arguments are:
-
driver
(required) - A selenium-webdriver driver instance -
name
(required) - The snapshot name; must be unique to each snapshot -
options
- An object containing various snapshot options. See per-snapshot configuration options
To learn more, visit Percy snapshot.
Run Percy
Run your tests using percy exec
command as shown below:
If you are unable to use the percy:exec
command or prefer to run your tests using IDE run options, you can use the percy exec:start
and percy exec:stop
commands. To learn more, visit Run Percy.
This command starts Percy, create a new Percy build, takes snapshots and uploads them to your project, and stops Percy:
Congratulations!
You have successfully created your first build on Percy. To see the build with snapshots of your application, visit your project in Percy.
When you run another build with visual changes to your application, Percy takes new snapshots. You can then see the comparisons between the two runs on the new build.
Advanced topics
Percy Snapshot command
In the preceding steps, we used the Percy Snapshot command for capturing snapshots. Percy provides various configurations to use with Percy snapshot command. To learn more visit, Percy snapshot command.
Base build selection
By default, Percy uses the previous build for comparison however, you always have the option to configure the base build for comparison as needed. To learn more, visit base build selection logic.
Related topics
Before you begin, ensure your Automate script’s capabilities are using Selenium version 3.11.0 and above.
- We recommend using Selenium 4 with Percy on Automate to boost performance and ensure increased stability while capturing screenshots.
- Capture a full-page screenshot using the full-page parameter. By default, Percy On Automate captures a single tile, for the full-page screenshot, refer to full page screenshot on Percy with Automate.
Integrate Percy on Automate with your test suite to run visual tests. To do that, follow these steps:
Step 1 - Install the latest Percy CLI
Step 2 - Install the SDK
For Javascript-based frameworks like WebdriverIO, or Mocha
Step 3 - In the Percy dashboard make selections as below:
- Select Web as the platform.
- Select Automate to handle browser selection.
- Click Create Project.
Step 4 - Export the Percy token.
A Percy token is generated when you create a project. Export this token environment variables.
Step 5 - Update your Automate test script.
(1) Import percy_screenshot
from Percy library using the below code:
(2) Use the Percy screenshot command to take required screenshots in your Automate session.
For example, in the following Javascript code, the percyScreenshot("name", "options")
method is called twice. In the first instance, we are passing only the required argument which is “name”. In the second instance, we are passing both the required and optional “options”.
(3) Add the browser capabilities to your test script
We recommend running your build using a single browser like Chrome or Firefox, to begin with. Once you have achieved stability with Chrome or Firefox, you can set up cross-browser testing.
// Add the following capabilities to your test script
const capabilities = {
'bstack:options': {
os: 'Windows',
osVersion: '10'
},
browserName: 'Chrome',
browserVersion: 'latest'
};
// Add these capabilities to your test script
const capabilities = {
os: 'Windows',
os_version: '10',
browserName: 'Chrome',
browser_version: 'latest'
};
Step 6 - Run the build
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