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

BrowserStack Username and Access key. You can find this in your account profile. If you do not have an account yet, you can sign up for a Free Trial.
Node.js v12 or higher installed on your machine.
Intern v4 and above.

Configure BrowserStack Local

In Intern v4, the BrowserStack local is set to true by default. If you want to set the local to false, you need to set the "forceLocal": false in the intern.json file.

Check BrowserStack Local connectivity

Run this sample test to check if BrowserStack Local is working as expected and can connect to BrowserStack servers.

Clone sample git repository

Clone the sample intern-browserstack repository and install dependencies. Skip this step if you have already cloned the repository.

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Set BrowserStack credentials

Set the userName and accessKey in the intern.json configuration file. Skip this step if you have already set credentials as environment variables.

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Execute build on BrowserStack

From the root directory of this project, run the following command:

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If the test fails, refer to the following section for additional configuration that may be needed.

Additional configuration

BrowserStack Local works out of the box in most cases, but depending on the URL being tested and your network setup, additional configuration may be needed. Following are the frequently occurring scenarios:

The URL being tested is accessible from the internet but serves different content within your internal network.

This is common with staging environments set up as sub-domains and configured to work only in your private/VPN network. In this case, add the following entry in your configuration (intern.json) file.

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The forceLocal capability resolves all network traffic through the BrowserStack Local tunnel.

Testing on Safari and iOS devices

When testing localhost on Safari desktop browsers and iOS real devices, your automation scripts Get URL/Open URL commands are redirecting to bs-local.com. This is a necessary action due to circumventing Safari browser behaviors and limitations. Check out the detailed explanation in this FAQ.

Potential impact on your test scripts

If your application is not honoring relative URLs and explicitly refers to localhost from a config file, for example. In this case, we recommend honoring relative URLs in your web application as a best practice or handling this case as you deem fit.

After you run your test, visit the Automate dashboard to view your test results.