> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.release.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.release.com/reference-documentation/e2e-testing.md). # End-to-end testing How to integrate third-party CI platforms with Release to do end-to-end testing (Skip directly to [Configure GitHub Actions](#configuring-github-actions-for-e2e-testing-with-release) or [Configure CircleCI](#configuring-circleci-for-e2e-testing-with-release).) If you have end-to-end (E2E) tests set up on a platform like GitHub actions or CircleCI, you can configure these tests to run in an ephemeral Release environment. The flow will be: 1. Create a new Release environment. 2. Run the E2E tests in this new environment. 3. Destroy the environment. Running E2E tests in an ephemeral environment ensures that they run on a "clean slate", which gives you confidence that tests do not rely on any unknown state that might exist in a long-running environment. Testing in an ephemeral environment also reduces costs because the environment is destroyed as soon as it's no longer needed. ## Configuring GitHub Actions for E2E testing with Release To integrate Release with GitHub Actions and run end-to-end tests, you can structure your GitHub Action `main.yml` file into four jobs: 1. Build and upload the image. 2. Create the Release environment. 3. Run E2E tests. 4. Delete the Release environment. We'll cover an example of how to do each step below. If you prefer, you can find the entire example config file in our [example React, Express, and MongoDB application on GitHub](https://github.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/blob/demo/github-actions/.github/workflows/main.yml). ### Building and uploading your tests as a Docker image Our first job, `build-and-upload`, will build and upload the image of our application to test or (as in the example below) fetch the images from a registry. Our example has a backend and a frontend as separate images, so we'll fetch each of those and save them to a temporary directory. We use the latest Ubuntu image from GitHub for this. We also have some standard GitHub Actions boilerplate to define the credentials we need and define the trigger. ```yaml name: GitHub Actions E2E Testing Demo on: push: branches: - demo/github-actions env: RELEASE_ACCOUNT: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_ACCOUNT }} RELEASE_APP: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_APP }} RELEASE_LOGIN: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_LOGIN }} RELEASE_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_TOKEN }} jobs: build_and_upload: name: Build and upload docker image runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - shell: bash run: | echo "building docker image..." echo "uploading docker image..." mkdir tmp echo "232490755822.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/backend:main" > tmp/backend_image.txt echo "232490755822.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/frontend:main" > tmp/frontend_image.txt - name: upload image name uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3 with: name: images path: tmp/ ``` ### Creating the Release environment The next job we define is `create_environment`, and this is where most of the Release-specific configuration needs to be. We pull a Docker image that includes the Release CLI and use it to create a new Release environment. We use the Release Account ID and Release Application ID defined earlier, pulled from our GitHub Secrets. We also define a [concurrency](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#concurrency) expression to prevent multiple jobs from running at once, in case commits come in close to each other. ```yaml create_environment: name: Create release environment needs: build_and_upload runs-on: ubuntu-latest concurrency: ci-${{ github.ref }} container: public.ecr.aws/releasehub-com/release-cli steps: - name: download artifacts uses: actions/download-artifact@v3 with: name: images - name: create release environment shell: bash run: | BRANCH=e2e-testing FRONTEND_IMAGE=$(cat frontend_image.txt) BACKEND_IMAGE=$(cat backend_image.txt) FRONTEND=frontend BACKEND=backend release environments create \ --branch "$BRANCH" \ --image-overrides "$FRONTEND=$FRONTEND_IMAGE" \ --image-overrides "$BACKEND=$BACKEND_IMAGE" \ --output json \ --wait > res.json - name: upload image name uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3 with: name: json path: res.json ``` ### Running the E2E tests Now that we have the environment, we can run the tests. We'll call the next job `run_e2e_tests`. It should look as follows: ```yaml run_e2e_tests: name: run e2e tests needs: create_environment runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: checkout repository uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: download artifacts uses: actions/download-artifact@v3 with: name: json - name: create release environment shell: bash run: | echo "Install dependencies and run E2E tests..." FRONTEND_URL=$(jq -r '.environment.hostnames | .[] | select(.target=="frontend").hostname' res.json) BACKEND_URL=$(jq -r '.environment.hostnames | .[] | select(.target=="backend").hostname' res.json) jq -n --arg baseUrl "https://$FRONTEND_URL" '{ baseUrl: $baseUrl }' > cypress.json jq -n --arg backendUrl "https://$BACKEND_URL" '{ backendUrl: $backendUrl }' > cypress.env.json sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgbm-dev libnotify-dev libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libxss1 libasound2 libxtst6 xauth xvfb npm install npm run cy:run ``` Note that you'll need to change the command to install the dependencies you need and run your own tests in this step. ### Destroying the Release environment Our last job is to clean up the Release environment once the tests have run. We call the job `delete_environment` and it uses the Release CLI image. The `delete_environment` job needs access to your Release Account ID, App ID, and the Environment ID that was created in the previous step. ```yaml delete_environment: name: Delete release environment needs: run_e2e_tests runs-on: ubuntu-latest container: public.ecr.aws/releasehub-com/release-cli steps: - name: checkout repository uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: download artifacts uses: actions/download-artifact@v3 with: name: json - name: delete release environment shell: bash run: | echo "Delete the Release environment..." ENVIRONMENT_ID=$(jq -r '.environment.id' res.json) release environments delete "$ENVIRONMENT_ID" ``` ## Configuring CircleCI for E2E testing with Release To integrate Release with CircleCI and run end-to-end tests, you can structure your CircleCI `config.yml` file into four jobs: 1. Build and upload the image. 2. Create the Release environment. 3. Run E2E tests. 4. Delete the Release environment. We'll cover an example of how to do each step below. If you prefer, you can find the entire example config file as part of our [example React, Express, and MongoDB application on GitHub](https://github.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/blob/demo/circleci/.circleci/config.yml). ### Building and uploading your tests as a Docker image Our first job, `build-and-upload-image`, will build the image of our application to test or (as in the example below), fetch these images from a registry. Our example has a backend and a frontend as separate images, so we'll fetch each of those and save them to a temporary directory. We use a Node image from CircleCI to run this. We also have some standard CircleCI boilerplate to specify the target version. ```yaml version: 2.1 jobs: # In this example, we are not actually building and pushing docker image build-and-upload-image: docker: - image: circleci/node:13.8.0 steps: - run: name: Build and push docker image command: | mkdir tmp echo "Building docker image..." echo "Push docker image..." echo "232490755822.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/backend:main" > tmp/backend_image.txt echo "232490755822.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/awesome-release/react-express-mongodb/frontend:main" > tmp/frontend_image.txt - persist_to_workspace: root: . paths: - tmp/* ``` ### Creating the Release environment The next job we define is `create-release-environment`, and this is where most of the Release-specific configuration needs to be. We pull a Docker image that includes the Release CLI and use it to create a new Release Environment. For this to work, you'll need to make sure your Release Account ID and Release Application ID are in the appropriate environment variables. ```yaml create-release-environment: docker: - image: public.ecr.aws/releasehub-com/release-cli steps: - attach_workspace: at: ./ - run: name: Create a new Release environment command: | BRANCH=demo/circleci FRONTEND_IMAGE=$(cat tmp/frontend_image.txt) BACKEND_IMAGE=$(cat tmp/backend_image.txt) FRONTEND=frontend BACKEND=backend release environments create \ --branch "$BRANCH" \ --image-overrides "$FRONTEND=$FRONTEND_IMAGE" \ --image-overrides "$BACKEND=$BACKEND_IMAGE" \ --output json \ --wait > tmp/res.json - persist_to_workspace: root: . paths: - tmp/* ``` ### Running the E2E tests Now that we have the environment, we can run the tests. We'll call the next job `run-e2e-tests`. It should look as follows: ```yaml run-e2e-tests: docker: - image: circleci/node:13.8.0 steps: - checkout - attach_workspace: at: ./ - run: name: Run E2E Tests command: | echo "Install dependencies and run E2E tests..." FRONTEND_URL=$(jq -r '.environment.hostnames | .[] | select(.target=="frontend").hostname' tmp/res.json) BACKEND_URL=$(jq -r '.environment.hostnames | .[] | select(.target=="backend").hostname' tmp/res.json) jq -n --arg baseUrl "https://$FRONTEND_URL" '{ baseUrl: $baseUrl }' > cypress.json jq -n --arg backendUrl "https://$BACKEND_URL" '{ backendUrl: $backendUrl }' > cypress.env.json sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgbm-dev libnotify-dev libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libxss1 libasound2 libxtst6 xauth xvfb npm install npm run cy:run ``` Note that you'll need to change the command to install the dependencies you need and run your own tests in this step. ### Destroying the Release environment Our last job is to clean up the Release environment once the tests have run. We'll call the job `delete-release-environment`, and it uses the Release CLI image and needs access to your Release Account ID, App ID, and the Environment ID that was created in the previous step. ```yaml delete-release-environment: docker: - image: public.ecr.aws/releasehub-com/release-cli steps: - attach_workspace: at: ./ - run: name: Delete Release Environment command: | ENVIRONMENT_ID=$(jq -r '.environment.id' tmp/res.json) release environments delete "$ENVIRONMENT_ID" ``` Finally, we connect all of the jobs into a workflow as follows: ```yaml workflows: my_workflow: jobs: - build-and-upload-image: filters: branches: only: demo/circleci - create-release-environment: requires: [build-and-upload-image] filters: branches: only: demo/circleci - run-e2e-tests: requires: [create-release-environment] filters: branches: only: demo/circleci - delete-release-environment: requires: [run-e2e-tests] filters: branches: only: demo/circleci ``` --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. 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