Test localhost and staging websites that are not publicly accessible

BrowserStack can integrate with test suites pointing to your localhost URL, staging environment, and even websites behind one or more proxies/firewalls. This is done using BrowserStack Local - a tunneling feature that establishes a secure connection between your machine and the BrowserStack Cloud.

Prerequisites

If you have already run your first test, you can skip the prerequisites.

You need to have BrowserStack Username and Access key, which you can find in your account profile. If you have not created an account yet, you can sign up for a Free Trial.
Maven is installed on your machine, Maven environment variables are set, and Maven bin is added to system path, $PATH.

Run your first local test

Configure your Cucumber Java tests for Local Testing using the following steps:

Clone the cucumber-java-browserstack sample repo on GitHub using the following command:

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Verify that the browserstack-local-java dependency is added in the pom.xml file:

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Install the required dependencies by running the following command in your command-line:

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Update your Cucumber Java config file, cucumber-java-browserstack/src/test/resources/conf/local.conf.json, in your sample repository to set your BrowserStack Username and Access Key.

Verify that the local capability is set to true:

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Run your Cucumber Java test using BrowserStack Local with the following command:

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View your tests on BrowserStack on the BrowserStack Automate Dashboard.

Protip: You can use our capability builder and select from a wide range of custom capabilities that BrowserStack supports.

Understand your local test script

When you run the mvn test -P local command, the RunWebDriverCucumberTests.java file within the cucumber-java-browserstack/src/test/java/com/browserstack directory is executed, which uses the Cucumber TestNG Runner to run the Local.feature file.

When the test is triggered, it:

Opens the http://bs-local.com:45691/check website.
Checks whether the web page displays the Up and running text.
Marks the test as passed or failed based on whether the text is displayed on the web page.

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Understand the Cucumber Java configuration file

In the sample repository, the configuration file named local.conf.json exists in the cucumber-java-browserstack/src/test/resources/conf/ directory of the project. It is preloaded with default configuration for connecting tests to BrowserStack, and sample capabilities, such as browser name and its version, for running tests.

The capability local is set to true in this file to run local tests.