flutter_convenient_test

Flutter Package CI Post-release Codacy Badge

Write and debug tests easily, with full action history, time travel, screenshots, rapid re-execution, video records, retryability, interactivity, isolation and more.

🚀 Advantages

And also...

📷 Quick demo

NOTE: The video only contains features up to 2022.05. New features not included in the video: The 5x speedup, the enhanced golden, etc.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5236035/167066810-d0aa36ba-0113-4140-92f9-cec0a9e77ed1.mov

Stability

It has been used extensively in my own 200kloc Flutter app in production environment, and I integrate it with my CI infra so it is run everyday.

P.S. Surely, this package - especially the doc - is not yet perfect. If having problems, just create an issue and I usually reply quite quickly.

Unreleased features

I have been using these components internally for a long time, but have not found time to make cleanup (e.g. remove internal dependencies) in order to open-source it. If you like it, feel free to tell me and I will prioritize it!

📚 Features

5x speedup & remove mobile devices

In addition to the standard way of integration tests, i.e. run them on a real mobile device / a simulator, this package supports running the exact same testing code on your host computer (Windows/MacOS/Linux) with similar experience.

This leads to a big speedup and reduction of needed resources. As we all know, running code on simulators / real devices are slow, and hard to parallelize as well. Running on host computer, on the other hand, does not have this problem.

Remark: In my own app in production, it is >10x faster, but without creating public and reproducible tests, I do not want to claim such a big improvement - so test by youself and see how fast it provides :)

How to use it: Just write code normally, and execute your code as if it is a widget test. If you see weird fonts, you may want loadAppFonts.


Full action history

See actions/taps/assertions taken in the tests, with friendly descriptions (in the left panel)


Time travel with screenshots

Tap an action to see its screenshots

P.S. Use mouse wheels and dragging to zoom and pan the screenshots.

P.S. The gif is outdated - new version has (1) an overview of all screenshots (2) a ruler for each screenshot.


Rapid re-execution

Edit code, save, run - within seconds


Videos recorded

Watch what has happened in full detail (in right panel)

P.S. Highlighted action is in sync with the playing video. Tap action to seek video.


Being interactive

Temporarily play with the app, interactively. (Flutter originally cannot interact with app in test mode)


Retryability

No manual pump, wait or retry anymore. Just write down what you want, and the framework will retry and wait.

Example:

await t.get(find.byTooltip('Fetch Data From Backend')).tap();
// OK even if "fetch data" needs undeterministic time interval. Will automatically pump, wait and retry.
await t.get(find.text('New Data')).should(findsOneWidget);

More in quickstart and tutorials below.

Isolation mode

One test will no longer destroy environment of other tests - now you can run run each with full isolation.

This is especially helpful in big projects (such as mine), when an end-to-end setup is not easy to tear down, and one failed test can cause all subsequent tests to have damaged execution environment and thus fail.

Technical details: If this mode is enabled, a hot restart will be performed after each attempt of each test.

Abundant information for errors

When something is not working, it tries to print out as much information as possible to help you quickly debug.

For example, suppose you provide a finder that accidentally matches two widgets. Then, convenient_test will tell you the location of each widget, as well as a chain of render objects. Together with the screenshots/videos it provides, the finder problem can be fixed easily.

Remark: The GIFs are outdated and does not show this feature.

Enhanced golden

This is a standalone feature, i.e. you can use it without using convenient_test.

Golden overview GUI

It is a simple GUI to list and check all golden differences, with interactivity like pan and zoom. I personally use it daily as follows: After changing a feature, I run all regression tests. Then, if some tests report a golden change, I look at this page to check whether the change is intended or a bug.

To enter this page, tap the "golden" button at the top of homepage.

Golden utilities

Quickstart example

goldenFileComparator = EnhancedLocalFileComparator.configFromCurrent(); // setup

// just like the old way, except that we call `EnhancedLocalFileComparator.createUri` with extra configurations
final config = GoldenConfig(...);
await expectLater(whatever, matchesGoldenFile(EnhancedLocalFileComparator.createUri('something.png', config)));

Utilities

integration_test is still there

You can still use everything from integration_test, mockito, test, etc. This package is not a reinvented wheel, and has exposed the underlying integration_test to you.

If you want to migrate to this package from raw integration_test, have a look at Getting Started section below.

Flaky tests awareness

Flaky is flaky, and we are aware of it. It is neither failed nor success, so you will not be alarmed by false positives, and not completely ignore it.

CI / headless mode

packages/convenient_test_manager_dart runs without GUI and only produce log data and exit code, making it suitable to be run in a CI. Simply use convenient_test_manager_dart instead of convenient_test_manager. See Run the manager and Getting started.

# in one shell
convenient_test_manager_dart
# in another shell, run your worker app
flutter run integration_test/main_test.dart --host-vmservice-port 9753 --disable-service-auth-codes --dart-define "CONVENIENT_TEST_APP_CODE_DIR=$PWD"

Reports

If you want to examine the details with GUI, just open the generated artifact in the GUI using Load Report button.

By default the manager will save reports to a temporary directory. Typically:

Use --report-save-path /some/path (or --dart-define "CONVENIENT_MANAGER_REPORT_SAVE_PATH=/some/path") to change this.

Format

The reports are exported using protobuf. See the schema at convenient_test.proto.

Run single test/group

Tap "Run" icon button after each test or group to re-run only that test/group, without running anything else. All within seconds - no need to recompile like what the original test package did.

Visually see target regions

Useful when replaying videos and screenshots

Raw logs

Tap "Raw Logs" in the right panel to see raw outputs of a test.

Header panel

Following is a brief description of the functionalities of each button in the header panel.

Following are about the toggles:

Tutorial: Run examples

  1. Clone this repository and enter the packages/convenient_test/example folder.
  2. Run the example app (e.g. using iOS simulator) via: 
    flutter run integration_test/main_test.dart --host-vmservice-port 9753 --disable-service-auth-codes --dart-define "CONVENIENT_TEST_APP_CODE_DIR=$PWD"
    Can also be run via VSCode or Android Studio with similar commands.
  3. Run the GUI located in packages/convenient_test_manager. (See details in section below)
  4. Enjoy the GUI!

Getting started

  1. (Optional but recommended) Navigate to the flutter home directory and apply this patch: cd $FLUTTER_HOME && curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_convenient_test/master/doc/patches/flutter/get-running-async-tasks.diff | git apply
    • While this is not strictly necessary, it is recommended to improve scenarios when running multiple async tasks. see #337 for more information
  2. Navigate to your project dir and run flutter pub add convenient_test dev:convenient_test_dev
    • or manually update your pubspec.yaml to include convenient_test: ^1.0.0 in the dependencies section, and convenient_test_dev: ^1.0.0 in the dev_dependencies section. As normal, we need to flutter pub get.
  3. Create integration_test/main_test.dart file in your app. Fill it like void main() => convenientTestMain(MyConvenientTestSlot(), () { ... the normal test code you write });. See the example main_test.dart for demonstration.
  4. Run your app (e.g. using iOS simulator) via flutter run integration_test/main_test.dart --host-vmservice-port 9753 --disable-service-auth-codes --dart-define "CONVENIENT_TEST_APP_CODE_DIR=$PWD". Can also be run via VSCode or Android Studio with similar commands.
    • for use with the Android emulator, add --dart-define CONVENIENT_TEST_MANAGER_HOST=10.0.2.2
  5. Run the Convenient Test Manager (See details in section below)

Run the manager

Method 1: Download precompiled binary

See Releases for binaries.

Additionally, there are precompiled binaries for each commit, at the "artifacts" section in the CI page (download only available for logged in GitHub users). For example, go to the most recent CI run, download manager_gui_macos artifact, unzip it, and open it.

Method 2: flutter run / flutter build

The GUI and CLI managers are just flutter and dart projects as well, respectively. So they can be run and built in the same way one would with any other flutter or dart project:

Check the requirements for developing flutter desktop apps for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Then:

git clone https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_convenient_test.git
cd flutter_convenient_test/packages/convenient_test_manager

# compile executable. platform = linux | macos | windows
flutter build <platform>
# or just run directly
flutter run -d <platform>

For CLI manager:

cd flutter_convenient_test/packages/convenient_test_manager

dart compile exe bin/convenient_test_manager_dart.dart
# or just run directly
dart run

Method 3: dart pub global (only CLI manager)

Set up once (re-run to update):

dart pub global activate --source git https://github.com/fzyzcjy/flutter_convenient_test.git --git-path packages/convenient_test_manager_dart

[!TIP] Add --git-ref v1.x.x to dart pub global activate to check out a specific release.

Run using:

dart pub global run convenient_test_manager_dart

Miscellaneous

Configuration

There are a few ways to configure the manager:

  1. From $HOME/.config/convenient_test.json.
  2. From various environment variables.
  3. From command line arguments (when run via convenient_test_manager_dart command line)
  4. Change configurations via GUI (e.g. switches at right-top)

For all options that are configurable and all environment variable names, please see

(By doing so you can always see the up-to-date information and there is no possibility to see outdated doc.)

If you are trying to use this package with Android Virtual Emulator (AVD), you may need to set kConvenientTestManagerHost to 10.0.2.2 (add --dart-define CONVENIENT_TEST_MANAGER_HOST=10.0.2.2) because of its network topology. Please see issue #253 for more details.

Limitations

  1. Video replaying feature is not yet implemented in Android (but feel free to PR!).

Q&A

pumpWithRunAsyncUntil timed out

One thing to check is whether there are infinite animations. For example, setting EditableText.debugDeterministicCursor = true can avoid cursor blinking forever.

Contributors

For detailed PRs (excluding myself), please see this link.

All Contributors

Rohith Gilla
Rohith Gilla
💻		 Mehran Kordi
Mehran Kordi
💻		 ethancadoo
ethancadoo
💻 📖		 Vishesh Handa
Vishesh Handa
💻		 Takuma Osada
Takuma Osada
💻		 ronba
ronba
💻		 Bartek Pacia
Bartek Pacia
💻
Alex Li
Alex Li
💻		 getBoolean
getBoolean
💻		 gilice
gilice
💻		 Max Jakobitsch
Max Jakobitsch
💻 📖		 Josh Matthews
Josh Matthews
💻		 Benjamin Kampmann
Benjamin Kampmann
💻		 Mario Meltzow
Mario Meltzow
💻
Luna
Luna
💻		 Kai Lehmann
Kai Lehmann
💻

Thanks for testing frameworks in JavaScript, especially Cypress, for giving inspirations!