README.md

Running Protractor Tests on Docker

This is a simple tutorial that shows how to use docker to run Protractor tests. We would setup a Selenium Grid and run the tests.

Prerequisites

Docker needs to be installed on your machine. One can download it from Docker's website and follow the documentation accordingly. It is assumed that , one knows the basics of Docker for this tutorial.

Setup

To ensure Docker is installed sucessfully , type :

docker -v

and one would see a similar output , depending on the version of docker installed :

Docker version 1.12.0-rc4, build e4a0dbc, experimental

Step 0 - Download the docker images for Selenium Hub and Selenium Node

docker pull selenium/hub:latest
docker pull selenium/node-chrome:latest

One could pull 'node-firefox' if they want to work with firefox node. For more information about the different images one can work with , please look at Docker Selenium Images List

Step 1 - Starting the Selenium Grid

docker run -d -p 4444:4444 --name selenium-hub selenium/hub:latest

One can change the tag from 'latest' to '2.53.0' or any other version as they see fit.

Step 2 - Starting the Selenium Nodes

docker run -d --link selenium-hub:hub selenium/node-chrome:latest

The above would create a chrome node and link it to the Selenium hub/grid created earlier.

Step 3 - Running the tests

Update the seleniumAddress to the url of the hub in your protractor config file.

seleniumAddress: 'http://localhost:4444/wd/hub'

and run your tests.

./node_modules/.bin/protractor <config-file>

• Maximising the browser window

  • Depending on the webpage, the element needs to be scrolled to , in order for it to be visible, by maximising the window , the number of times , one would have to use the util method for it, decreases.

  • Also useful for debugging tests.

• Specifying implicit wait

  • By specifying the implicit wait , protractor waits before throwing an error for performing an action. Especially useful when the page load time fluctuates due to network.

browser.manage().window().maximize();
browser.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5000);

Step 4 - Debugging the tests

At this point you would be able to see the output of the tests and will not be able to visually confirm that the tests are running.

Install RealVNC viewer.

One needs to add a node-chrome-debug ( which has a vnc server set up ) to the selenium grid instead of node-chrome to be able to view the tests running . This can not be acheived with a node-chrome because the vnc server is not setup , in the node-chrome docker image.

One can also use the standalone-chrome-debug for the same.

docker run -d -p <port>:5900 --link selenium-hub:hub selenium/node-chrome-debug:latest

Find the port that VNC server exposes for the container :

docker port <container-name or container-id> 5900

and view it using the vnc viewer using the output of the above command.

Using Docker Compose

Till this point , the selenium hub and nodes were created by typing commands in the CLI. This approach would work on one's machine , but is not a scalable solution. That's where Docker Compose comes into picture. We would do the above the steps , by specifying a .yml file and see the results.

Create a docker-compose.yml

version: '3.5'
services:
  chrome:
    image: selenium/node-chrome-debug:3.11.0-californium
    volumes:
      - /dev/shm:/dev/shm
    environment:
      HUB_HOST: hub
    ports:
      - "5900:5900"  
    networks:
      - protractortest
  hub:
    image: selenium/hub:3.11.0-californium
    ports:
      - "4444:4444"
    networks:
      - protractortest
  angular:
    image: node:6-alpine
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    volumes:
      - ./app:/var/www
    working_dir: /var/www
    command: ["npm", "start"]
    networks:
      - protractortest
networks:
  protractortest:
    name: protractortest

Then in the terminal, enter the command

docker-compose up -d

docker run -it --rm --network=protractortest -v /dev/shm:/dev/shm -v $(pwd):/protractor jozzhart/node-6-protractor ./docker-selenium-grid-conf.js

or use the shortcut

npm test

Where to go next

This should get you started with writing tests using Docker and Protractor . To learn more, see the documentation for Docker and Protractor.