Integrate Your Test Suite with BrowserStack

This section will help you migrate your existing test suite to run on BrowserStack Automate. It also covers key features and best practice recommendations for smooth integration.

Setup authentication

Step 1: Set environment variables for BrowserStack credentials

# Set these values in your ~/.zprofile (zsh) or ~/.profile (bash)
export BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME="YOUR_USERNAME"
export BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"

# setx.exe does not set the environment variable in the current command prompt, but it will be available in subsequent command prompts
setx BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME "YOUR_USERNAME"
setx BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"

# Verify whether the variables have been set
echo BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME
echo BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY

Alternatively, you can also add your BrowserStack credentials in the test cases as shown in the following example:

desired_cap = {
  'browserstack.username': 'BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME',
  'browserstack.accessKey': 'BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY'
}

In the previous section, we set up BrowserStack credentials directly in the test script and the sample build. However, for a production-grade integration we recommend you store your credentials as environment variables and use those environment variables in your code.

Step 2: Connect CDP endpoint

Connect to the CDP endpoint at BrowserStack as shown in the following example:

def run_session(playwright):
  clientPlaywrightVersion = str(subprocess.getoutput('playwright --version')).strip().split(" ")[1]
  desired_cap['client.playwrightVersion'] = clientPlaywrightVersion

  cdpUrl = 'wss://cdp.browserstack.com/playwright?caps=' + urllib.parse.quote(json.dumps(desired_cap))
  browser = playwright.chromium.connect(cdpUrl)
  page = browser.new_page()

Migrate your test cases

This section helps you with all the configuration changes, commonly used features, and best practices for a smooth migration of your existing test cases to BrowserStack.

Step 1: Run test suite on a single browser

We recommend running your build using a single browser like Chrome, WebKit, or Firefox to begin with. This will isolate issues during the migration phase and help with faster debugging. Refer the capabilities as shown to use Chrome.
Once you’ve migrated your test cases or have achieved stability with Chrome or Firefox, you can set up cross-browser testing.

desired_cap = {
  'browser': 'chrome',  # allowed browsers are `chrome`, `edge`, `playwright-chromium`, `playwright-firefox` and `playwright-webkit`
  'browser_version': 'latest', # this capability is valid only for branded `chrome` and `edge` browsers and you can specify any browser version like `latest`, `latest-beta`, `latest-1` and so on.
  'os': 'osx',
  'os_version': 'catalina',
}

Step 2: Organize tests

Naming your tests and builds properly is crucial for effective debugging, test reporting, and analyzing your build execution time. Here are the capabilities you can use.

desired_cap = {
  'name': 'Branded Google Chrome on Catalina',
  'build': 'playwright-python-1',
  'project': 'My playwright project',
}

Step 3: Mark test as passed or failed

To mark whether your test has passed or failed on BrowserStack, use the following Javascript executor in your test script. You can mark a test as passed or failed based on your test assertions.

if title == "Browserstack - Google Search":
    # following line of code is responsible for marking the status of the test on BrowserStack as 'passed'. You can use this code in your after hook after each test
    mark_test_status("<status>", "<reason>", page)
else:
    mark_test_status("<status>", "<reason>", page)

The arguments passed in the Javascript method for setting the status and the corresponding reason of the test are status and reason:

• status accepts either passed or failed as the value
• reason accepts a value in string datatype

Step 4: Set up debugging capabilities

BrowserStack provides the following debugging capabilities for your tests:

• Use visual logs capability to capture screenshots at every Playwright command automatically. You can enable visual logs by using the browserstack.debug capability.
• Console Logs with log level ‘errors’ are enabled by default. You can enable different log levels viz. warnings, info, verbose, errors, and disable using the browserstack.console capability.
• Network Logs capture the browser’s performance data such as network traffic, latency, HTTP requests, and responses in a HAR format. You can enable network logs using the browserstack.networkLogs capability.

Enable these debugging capabilities as shown in the following code example:

capabilities = {
 "browserstack.debug" : "true",
 "browserstack.console" : "disable"
 "browserstack.networkLogs" : "true",
"browserstack.networkLogsOptions": {
    "captureContent": "true"
}

Connect your website under test

BrowserStack can integrate with test suites pointing to your localhost URL, staging environment, and even websites behind one or more proxies/firewalls. To test using localhost, perform the following steps:

pip install browserstack-local

# Creates an instance of Local
bs_local = new Local();

# You can also set an environment variable - "BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY".
bs_local_args = { "key": "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" }

# Starts the Local instance with the required arguments
bs_local.start(**bs_local_args)

# Check if BrowserStack local instance is running
print("BrowserStackLocal running: " + str(bs_local.isRunning()))

# Your test code goes here, from creating the driver instance till the end, i.e. $bs_local->stop()
    
# Stop the Local instance
bs_local.stop()

desired_cap = {
  'browserstack.local': 'true',
}

# Run this command in your terminal to start the BrowserStack Local binary. Your working directory should be where you have the downloaded binary.
./BrowserStackLocal --key <YOUR_ACCESS_KEY>

desired_cap = {
  'browserstack.local': 'true',

Next Steps

• Run your first test
• Learn how to test localhost and staging websites
• Set browser options
• Select Playwright version
• Run test from behind a proxy