Practical Introduction to CodeceptJS: Writing End-to-end Test for Checkout Form

The heart of every ecommerce website is its 'checkout' process. Whatever happens to a shop this should work to ensure the cashflow. That's why the checkout should be regularly tested. To reduce human factor and establish stability of the process we recommend using test automation framework. The simplest one to start is CodeceptJS

What-what? Did you say CodeceptJS?

Yes! CodeceptJS is a popular open-source testing framework for JavaScript. It is designed to make it easy to write and maintain end-to-end tests for web applications, using a readable and intuitive syntax. To run tests in browser it uses Playwright library from Microsoft.

CodeceptJS was first released in 2015, and it has since become a popular testing framework for JavaScript developers. It is widely used by organizations of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.

Let's get CodeceptJS installed!

To install CodeceptJS, you will need to have Node.js and npm (the Node.js package manager) installed on your system. You can check if you already have these tools installed by running the following commands in a terminal:

node --version
npm --version

If either of these commands return an error, you will need to install Node.js and npm before you can install CodeceptJS. You can download and install the latest version of Node.js from the official website, which includes npm.

To install CodeceptJS create a new folder and run command form terminal:

npx create-codeceptjs .

If you run the npx create-codeceptjs . command, it will install CodeceptJS with Playwright in the current directory.

The npx command is a tool that comes with npm (the Node.js package manager) and it allows you to run npm packages without having to install them globally on your system.

It may take some time as it downloads browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari and creates a demo project.

But we are here to write a checkout test, right?

Let's initialize a new project for that!

Run

npx codeceptjs init

Agree on defaults (press Enter for every question asked). When asked for base site URL, provide a URL of a ecommerce website you are testing. For instance, it could be: https://myshop.com if you test already published website or http://localhost if you run the website locally.

When asked for a test name and suite name write "Checkout". It will create the following dirctory structure:

.
├── codecept.conf.js
├── package.json
└── Checkout_test.js

The codecept.conf.js file in the root of the project directory contains the global configuration settings for CodeceptJS.

Now open a test:

Feature('Checkout');

Scenario('test something', ({ I }) => {
});

Inside the Scenario block you write a test.

Add I.amOnPage('/') into it. It will open the browser on a URL you specified as a base.

Feature('Checkout');

Scenario('test something', ({ I }) => {
  I.amOnPage('/')
});

But you may want to ask...

What is I?

Glad you asked!

In CodeceptJS, the I object is used to represent the user performing actions in a test scenario. It provides a number of methods (also known as actions) that can be used to simulate user interactions with the application under test.

Some of the most popular actions of the I object are:

• I.amOnPage(url): This action navigates the user to the specified URL.
• I.click(locator): This action simulates a click on the element identified by the given locator.
• I.fillField(field, value): This action fills the specified field with the given value.
• I.see(text, context): This action checks that the given text is visible on the page (or in the specified context).
• I.selectOption(select, option): This action selects the specified option from the given select dropdown.
• I.waitForElement(locator, timeout): This action waits for the specified element to appear on the page, up to the given timeout.
• I.waitForText(text, timeout, context): This action waits for the given text to appear on the page (or in the specified context), up to the given timeout.

We will need to use them to navigate into Checkout process. How do we navigate web? Sure by clicking on links!

Let's use I.click() for that.

But how we can access elements on a webpage?

CodeceptJS is smart enough to locate clickable elements by their visible text. For instance, if on your ecommerce website you have a product 'Coffee Cup' with that exact name you can use

I.click('Coffee Cup');

But sometimes elements are not as easy to locate, so you can use CSS or XPath locators to locate them.

For instance, locating Coffee Cup via CSS can take into accont HTML structure of a page and element attributes. For instance, it can be like this:

I.click('div.products a.product-name[title="Coffee Cup"]');

In this example, the div.products part of the selector specifies a div element with the products class, and the a.product-name[title="Coffee Cup"] part specifies an a element with the product-name class and the title attribute set to Coffee Cup.

You can read more about HTML and CSS locators, and basically that's all what you need to know to start writing a checkout test!

Get back to Checkout

Let's see how a regular checkout script may look in CodeceptJS:

Scenario('test the checkout form', async ({ I }) => {
  // we select one product and switched to checkout project
  I.amOnPage('/');
  I.click('Coffee Cup');
  I.click('Purchase');
  I.click('Checkout');

  // fill in the shipping address
  I.fillField('First Name', 'John');
  I.fillField('Last Name', 'Doe');
  I.fillField('Address', '123 Main St.');
  I.fillField('City', 'New York');
  I.selectOption('State', 'New York');
  I.fillField('Zip Code', '10001');

  // select a payment method
  I.click('#credit-card-option');
  I.fillField('Card Number', '1234-5678-9012-3456');
  I.fillField('Expiration Date', '12/22');
  I.fillField('Security Code', '123');

  // click the checkout button
  I.click('Checkout');

  // verify that the checkout was successful
  I.see('Your order has been placed successfully!');
});

Sure, in relaity your script might be more complicated. As you have noticed, we used CSS locator '#credit-card-option' to get select a payment option. However, the test is simple and you can follow user steps through it.

Please note, that you shouldn't use a real credit card number here. Good news, you don't need to. Payment providers like Strip provide dummy card numbers for testing purposes.

Run the test with next command:

npx codeceptjs run --debug -p pauseOnFail

What are special options here?

• --debug flag is used to output additional information to the console, such as the details of each step in the test, the values of variables, and the results of test assertions. This can help you to identify and fix any issues in your tests.
• -p pauseOnFail option is also used to keep the browser opened even if a test fails. It will help us to identify to which point test was executed and what can be improved.

Add more test steps if needed, update locators, and notify business owners that all that purchases are made by you so your collegues won't call you in the night asking when you want to get a coffee cup 😀 Also the good idea is to run tests on staging website, to not interfere with business process.

What a test is complete you can run it with:

npx codeceptjs run

If you are annoyed to see a browser window you can use HEADLESS environment variable:

HEADLESS=true codeceptjs run

for Windows users HEADLESS should be set in a different manner:

set HEADLESS=true&& codeceptjs run

The tests will pass but no browser is shown, so you can watch YouTube videos while it goes!

Refactoring

What if you need to check more purchases? Should you copy paste your code for that?

No! You can use Page Object pattern to put repeating interactions into the reusable functions.

You can create a page object via next command:

npx codeceptjs gpo

Sure, we will call it Checkout. It will be created in ./pages/Checkout.js file. You should enable it in codecept.conf.js inside include section:

    include: {
    ...
      checkoutPage: './pages/Checkout.js',
    },

Now open this file:

const { I } = inject();

module.exports = {

  // insert your locators and methods here
}

Feels really empty. What should we do about it? Should we write more code? No, we already have it. Let's copy code blocks from a test we have it and place them under a corredponnding function names:

connst { I } = inject();

module.exports = {

  fillShippingAddress(name, address, city, state, zip) {
    I.fillField('Name', name);
    I.fillField('Address', address);
    I.fillField('City', city);
    I.fillField('State', state);
    I.fillField('Zip', zip);
  },

  fillValidCreditCard() {
    I.click('#credit-card-option');
    I.fillField('Card Number', '1234-5678-9012-3456');
    I.fillField('Expiration Date', '12/22');
    I.fillField('Security Code', '123');
  },

  checkout() {
    I.click('Checkout');
  },
}

After that we can update our test to use the created page object. Note, that we import Checkout PageObject by its name checkoutPage we previously defined in a config.

Scenario('test the checkout form', async ({I, checkoutPage}) => {
  I.amOnPage('/');
  I.click('Coffee Cup');
  I.click('Purchase');
  I.click('Checkout');

  // fill in the shipping address using the page object
  checkoutPage.fillShippingAddress('John', 'Doe', '123 Main St.', 'New York', 'New York', '10001');
  checkoutPage.fillValidCreditCard();
  checkoutPage.checkout();

  // verify that the checkout was successful
  I.see('Your order has been placed successfully!');
});

As you see the code of a test was reduced. And we can write the similar tests on the same manner.

By applying more and more cases you can test a website to all behaviors.

Summary

This was a deep dive! If you think on just starting test automation, CodeceptJS is the best choice for you as it uses native language to pass commands to browser.

If you already skilled in JavaScript, with CodeceptJS you can focus on business level of your test, instead of writing code for browser. This way you can keep your tests stable and maintainable.

To provide a day-to-day status of a tested website use Testomat.io for test reporting. So you always know when the last checks were executed and which of tests passed and failed.

Enjoy the testing!