As applications get more sophisticated, it becomes necessary to ensure that teams can test and deliver their code in a consistent and repeatable fashion. One of the most difficult aspects of testing a web-based application has always been the application itself; testing the user’s paths through your interface is a critical but challenging aspect of project delivery. User interface tests have traditionally been very involved to set up and maintain, often requiring a very technical and experienced skillset. Ghost Inspector solves this problem by providing simple-to-use tooling that allows anyone on your team to create and maintain your browser-based tests. QA teams can to deliver more quickly, more consistently, and test more thoroughly within your application.
Ghost Inspector is an automated browser testing service that allows you to create, manage and execute tests easily from the cloud. Our tool lets you record and playback tests using real browsers, recreating the actions of your end users in a testable and repeatable fashion.
Execute your Ghost Inspector test suites with ease
The orbs that we’ve authored allow you to integrate Ghost Inspector into your CircleCI workflow with just a few lines of configuration, bringing the power of our browser-based testing solution to your deployment workflow. Tests can be recorded and managed easily by anyone on your team and are stored directly in our cloud-based platform for easy execution. You can utilize our orbs to execute a single test or an entire suite of tests within your deployment pipeline. Tests can be executed against an existing staging environment or an environment dynamically specified at runtime. We even give you the ability to parameterize and modularize your tests to match the sophisticated nature of today’s web applications. Once the test is completed, our orb will update your CircleCI workflow with the status of the test suite, making it easy for you to isolate breakages and notify your team before they hit your production systems.
Get started with a few lines of code
CircleCI orbs offer an immense amount of power and flexibility with just a few lines of code. Before the release of orbs, a typical CircleCI configuration would include dozens of lines of code to accomplish the same task. Now with orbs, the configuration is very simple.
Here is an example of executing a test suite within your Ghost Inspector account:
version: 2.1
orbs:
ghostinspector: ghostinspector/test-runner@1.0.0
jobs:
build:
executor: ghostinspector/default
steps:
- ghostinspector/execute-test:
id: $GI_TEST
extra-params: '{"foo": "bar", "other": "var"}'
wait: true
As you can see, our configuration has been reduced significantly, including options to provide the starting URL for the test suite, as well as additional parameters required for your test steps. This configuration above will execute the Ghost Inspector test suite specified and wait for the results before moving on, failing the build if false.
We also provide some more complex examples for testing your application within your Docker cluster at build time.
Wrapping up
With orbs, CircleCI has raised the bar in terms of simplifying the configuration of your DevOps workflows. There has never been a better time to automate your QA efforts and integrate them more rapidly into your build and deployment cycle. We hope this integration of Ghost Inspector with CircleCI orbs will help lower the barrier to entry for testing teams as well as ease the burden of testing your web-based applications from end-to-end.
Learn more about CircleCI and Ghost Inspector during our webinar, Ghost Inspector and CircleCI Orbs: Executing your test suites with ease, at 11:00am PST/19:00 UTC on February 6, 2019. Sign up here.
Justin Klemm is the founder and tech lead at Ghost Inspector. He’s a seasoned engineer with a passion for creating good user experiences.
