January 2019 Summaries

Cypress.io has appointed Steven Yi as the new Vice President of Marketing, bringing extensive experience in both software development and marketing to the company. Yi, who has a background in various programming languages and platforms, began his career in developer roles before transitioning to marketing, where he led significant projects such as Microsoft's Azure cloud launch and Red Hat's cloud strategy. Most recently, he focused on marketing for AI and SaaS startups in Seattle. Yi expressed enthusiasm for joining Cypress.io, citing the team's passion and the potential impact on the JavaScript ecosystem, aiming to enhance app quality and developer experiences. Based in Seattle, Yi enjoys outdoor activities such as rock climbing and skiing when not at work.

The blog post by Gleb Bahmutov explores a common issue faced by users of the Cypress end-to-end testing framework, specifically regarding the cy.click() command not behaving as expected. Using an example web application with a calendar modal, Bahmutov details how the command can fail due to a race condition where Cypress executes actions faster than the application can attach event listeners. While manually clicking works, the automated test fails because the click event is not registered in time to close the modal. The solution involves adding a manual wait to allow the application to catch up, but this is discouraged due to potential flakiness and test slowdown. Instead, the post introduces the cypress-pipe plugin, which allows for retrying user actions until the desired application state is achieved, thus ensuring the test passes by closing the modal once all event listeners are attached. The author emphasizes that while this method works in some cases, it is not universally applicable, especially if repeated actions have unintended side effects, and underscores the necessity of understanding the application’s intended behavior when writing tests.

Benjamin Cabanes, an Angular Engineer at Nrwl, discusses the integration of Cypress into the Angular development workflow using Nrwl Nx, an open-source project aiming to modernize enterprise software. While Cypress could be used with Angular CLI before, it required complex setups, leading many developers to prefer Protractor's easier CLI experience. Nrwl Nx now offers a streamlined process to incorporate Cypress, providing an out-of-the-box experience comparable to Protractor, allowing developers to choose between the two without additional setup hassles. By creating a workspace with Nx, developers can seamlessly integrate Cypress into their projects with the same command-line functionality they are accustomed to, including running tests in watch mode and configuring settings like snapshot and video recording. Angular Console further supports this integration, offering a UI to manage Nx's Cypress features and configurations, contributing to a more efficient Angular application development process.

In 2018, Cypress.io experienced significant growth, marked by the acquisition of CEO Drew Lanham and securing $4 million in funding from Las Olas Venture Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners, which enabled the company to expand its team and enhance its offerings. The year saw the introduction of key features like parallelization for faster test execution and the official launch of the Dashboard Service for detailed test insights. Additionally, Cypress increased its presence at global events, grew its GitHub stars from 3,030 to 9,300, and released new integrations, including visual testing tools with Percy.io and Applitools, as well as a partnership with CircleCI for easier CI configuration. Looking ahead to 2019, Cypress plans to prioritize cross-browser support, particularly for IE11, along with further developments in GitHub integration, SSO, alternative identity providers, native events, and new Dashboard Service features, driven by user feedback and community support.

Gleb Bahmutov's article argues against the use of page objects in end-to-end testing, particularly within the Cypress.io ecosystem, and advocates for the use of application actions instead. Page objects, while traditionally used to create a layer of abstraction for test maintenance, are critiqued for being difficult to maintain, introducing additional state, and slowing down tests by forcing interactions through the user interface. Bahmutov suggests directly dispatching actions to the application's internal logic, which can improve test speed and maintainability by leveraging Cypress's ability to run test code alongside application code. This approach not only speeds up tests—sometimes by as much as 50%—but also influences better application code refactoring, as tests become directly tied to the application's internal model interface rather than an unstable UI. Additionally, using application actions can lead to more focused error reporting and allows tests to be faster and more robust by bypassing the UI in favor of direct model manipulation.