Debug using an interactive session

If you are using BrowserStack SDK, you can set the following capabilities in the browserstack.yml file:

Example:

• Navigate to your Automate dashboard and go to the ongoing session.

• On your ongoing session page, click Interactive Debugging to start an interactive session.

Start an Interactive Session

To start an interactive session for any test on the Automate dashboard, you need to complete the following steps:

1. Run your test script in your IDE.
2. Navigate to your ongoing Automate session page and click Start an interactive session.
3. After an interactive session starts, perform any manual testing task in the interactive window on the Automate session page.
4. Stop the manual testing session by clicking Stop Interactive Session.

To see an example interactive session, refer to the following section.

See interactive session in action

To understand interactive session better, consider a Node.js script that opens the bstackdemo.com website, adds a product to the cart, verifies whether the product has been added to the cart, and then marks the test as passed or failed based on whether the product is available in the cart.

We will add a breakpoint using our IDE after the point in the test script flow where a product is added to a cart. When the test script execution reaches this breakpoint, we will start an interactive session that pauses the automated flow of the test script, remove the existing product from the cart, add another product to the cart, and then stop the interactive session.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that the following prerequisites are completed:

• Node.js installed on your machine.
• Node.js project is created in your IDE.
• IDE installed on your machine for adding breakpoint and running code in the debugger mode. Check out the following links to learn how to add breakpoints in some popular IDEs:
  • Visual Studio Code
  • Eclipse
  • IntelliJ
    This example uses Visual Studio Code.

Start debugging in an Interactive Session

To start an interactive session, complete the following steps:

1. Open a Node.js project in the IDE, create a test script file, for example, sample.js, and add the following example code to the file:

    const webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver');
    const { By } = require('selenium-webdriver');
    const assert = require('assert');
    // Input capabilities
    const capabilities = {
        'os_version' : '11',
        'resolution' : '1920x1080',
        'browserName' : 'Chrome',
        'browser_version' : '96.0',
        'os' : 'Windows',
        'interactiveDebugging' : true,
        'name': 'BStack-[NodeJS] Sample Test', // test name
        'build': 'BStack Build Number 1' // CI/CD job or build name
    }
    async function runTestWithCaps () {
    let driver = new webdriver.Builder().usingServer(`https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@hub-cloud.browserstack.com/wd/hub`).withCapabilities(capabilities).build();
    try{
        await driver.get("https://bstackdemo.com/");
        await driver.wait(webdriver.until.titleMatches(/StackDemo/i), 10000);
        // locating product on webpage
        const productOnScreen = await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementLocated(By.xpath('//*[@id="1"]/p')), 10000)
        // getting name of the product when the product is visible
        const productText =  await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementIsVisible(productOnScreen, 10000)).getText();
        // clicking the 'Add to cart' button
        await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementIsVisible(driver.findElement(By.xpath('//*[@id="1"]/div[4]'), 10000))).click();
   
        // Add a breakpoint here
   
        // waiting until the Cart pane has been displayed on the webpage
        await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementIsVisible(driver.findElement(By.className('float-cart__content'), 10000)));
        // locating product in cart
        const productInCart = await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementLocated(By.xpath('//*[@id="__next"]/div/div/div[2]/div[2]/div[2]/div/div[3]/p[1]')), 10000);
        // getting name of the product in cart if the product is visible on web page
        const productCartText =  await driver.wait(webdriver.until.elementIsVisible(productInCart, 10000)).getText();
        // checking whether product has been added to cart by comparing product name
        assert(productText === productCartText);
        //marking the test as Passed if product has been added to the cart
        await driver.executeScript(
        'browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"passed","reason": "Product has been successfully added to the cart!"}}'
        );
    } catch(e) {
        //marking the test as Failed if product has not been added to the cart
        console.log("Error:", e.message)
        await driver.executeScript(
        'browserstack_executor: {"action": "setSessionStatus", "arguments": {"status":"failed","reason": "Failed to add product to the cart or some elements failed to load."}}'
        );
    }
    await driver.quit();
    }
    runTestWithCaps();
   

2. Add a breakpoint at the line commented as // Add a breakpoint here in the example code to pause the test execution after a product is added to the cart.
   Check out the using breakpoints guide to learn how to add a breakpoint in Visual Studio Code..

3. Run the code in the debugger mode of the IDE.
   Check out the start debugging guide to learn how to run a code in a debugger code in Visual Studio code.
   
   Note: A session can be debugged at a breakpoint for a default timeout of a maximum of 90 seconds. After 90 seconds, the session stops running and displays the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error on your Automate dashboard.
   You can increase the timeout to a maximum of 300 seconds by adding the browserstack.idleTimeout capability in your test script. For more information, see how to resolve the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error.

4. Go to your Automate dashboard and navigate to the ongoing session.

5. On your ongoing session page, click Interactive Debugging.

6. After the interactive session starts, remove the existing product from the cart, add another product to the cart, and click Stop Interactive Session to exit the interactive mode.

7. In the IDE, click the Continue icon on the Debug toolbar to resume the test script execution.

The test script resumes its execution and displays the test result as FAILED in the build details on BrowserStack. This is expected behavior since we deviated from the test script assertions.