Get Started with Local Testing

This guide shows you how to set up and use Local Testing with BrowserStack App Automate.

Introduction

Enabling Local Testing with App Automate is a simple two-step process:

1. Establishing a Local Testing connection.
   
2. Configuring your execution REST API call so that the execution happens through the Local Testing connection.

This page will guide you through enabling Local Testing for App Automate sessions, and then using it to test apps that retrieve data from servers on your local machine, CI/CD machines/nodes, and other private network configurations.

Establishing a Local Testing connection

Via command-line interface:

You can start a Local Testing connection through your command-line interface by following the steps below:

1. Download the appropriate binary for your system:

   • OS X (10.7 and above)
   • Linux 32-bit
   • Linux 64-bit
   • Windows (XP and above)

   Note: The download links are secure. The binaries are digitally signed, identifying the publisher as ‘BrowserStack Ltd’.

2. Unzip the binary to a folder/directory on your machine.
3. Open your command-line interface and navigate to the folder containing the Local binary.
4. Run the binary using the following command

./BrowserStackLocal --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

BrowserStackLocal.exe --key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY

Configuring tests to run with Local Testing connection

After establishing the Local Testing connection, set the local parameter to true.

Sample API cURL request to execute the test locally:

curl -u "YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" \
-X POST "https://api-cloud.browserstack.com/app-automate/espresso/v2/build" \
-d '{"local" : "true", "devices": ["Samsung Galaxy S8-7.0"], "app": "bs://j3c874f21852ba57957a3fdc33f47514288c4ba4", "testSuite": "bs://f7c874f21852ba57957a3fdc33f47514288c4ba4"}' \
-H "Content-Type: application/json"

Remember to update the app and testSuite parameters with the app_url and test_url of your uploaded app and test-suite on BrowserStack

Note: The binary connection needs to be established before executing the test-suite, and disconnected only after execution is complete.

The Local Testing setup will differ slightly based on your requirements (for example, proxy settings, restricting connections to certain domains, etc.).