Threat Dragon version 2.0

End to end testing

End to End testing

End to end tests are executed against a full, running instance of Threat Dragon. They are intended to mock user behavior and assert that the the application behaves as expected. While it’s not practical to cover every possible user interaction, the testing covers most of the intended flows. E2E testing is the last step before deploying in the continuous delivery pipeline.

Running e2e tests

End to end testing is done using cypress. The full test suite is in td.vue/tests/e2e/specs and this is where most of the functional e2e tests should live.

A smaller subset of tests, called “smoke tests”, live in td.vue/tests/e2e/smokes. Smoke tests are run against a deployment as a sanity check to ensure that the deployment succeeded and there are no glaring issues in the deployment. Smoke tests should be quick and only check the bare basics.

To run end-to-end tests locally vue-cli-service will have to available on the command line. If there are errors such as vue-cli-service: command not found then run command npm install -g @vue/cli from the root directory of the Threat Dragon source tree.

Run test:e2e

To run the e2e tests locally, navigate to the td.vue directory and run:

npm install
npm run test:e2e

This will open the cypress runner application and load the suite of tests from tests/e2e/specs. From the cypress window you can select individual tests to run, or run all tests at once. This suite of tests uses cypress configuration file e2e.local.config.js.

A quick test can be done using command npm run test:vue, from either the root directory or the td.vue directory. This runs the same suite of tests but in headless mode using an electron server back-end.

Run test:e2e:local

This suite of tests is identical to test:e2e but the target is an application already running at http://localhost:8080/. To run these tests there first has to be a running web application, for example:

  • from directory td.vue invoke npm run dev
  • wait for the web app to be accessible on http://localhost:8080/

From a separate terminal in directory td.vue invoke: npm run test:e2e:local

A cypress runner application is opened as above, loading the suite of tests from tests/e2e/specs. This suite of tests uses cypress configuration file e2e.local.config.js.

Pipeline test:e2e-ci

This suite of tests is run in headless mode so that it can be used for the CI pipeline. It uses cypress configuration file e2e.ci.config.js and runs the tests/e2e/specs suite of tests.

The tests are run against an existing application on http://localhost:3000/, using port 3000 rather than 8080.

For local testing of this script, an instance of the docker file can be used to map port 3000:

  • from top directory run docker run -it --rm -p 3000:3000 -v $(pwd)/.env:/app/.env owasp-threat-dragon:dev
  • from directory td.vue invoke npm run test:e2e-ci

These tests are run by the CI pipeline after a successful deploy.

BrowserStack test:e2e-nightly

The online BrowserStack nightly tests use various browsers to run the tests listed in configuration file browserstack.nightly.json. The BrowserStack configuration uses cypress configuration file e2e.nightly.config.js and the suite of tests from is loaded from tests/e2e/specs.

The e2e nightly tests rely on the demo server to be running at https://www.threatdragon.com/.

These tests are run by the browserstack github nightly action using command npm run test:e2e-nightly. Test and debug these pipelines using github rather than from the local command line.

To check the configuration file e2e.nightly.config.js run this command from directory td.vue :

  • vue-cli-service test:e2e -C e2e.nightly.config.js --browser firefox --headless --url 'https://www.threatdragon.com/'

BrowserStack test:e2e-smokes

The e2e pipeline BrowserStack smoke tests rely on the demo server running at https://www.threatdragon.com/ and the scripts use command npm run test:e2e-smokes. Test and debug these pipelines using github rather than from the local command line.

The BrowserStack configuration file is browserstack.smokes.json which uses cypress configuration file e2e.smokes.config.js and the suite of tests is loaded from tests/e2e/specs/smokes.

These tests are run by the deploy github action. To check the configuration file e2e.smokes.config.js run this command from directory td.vue :

  • vue-cli-service test:e2e -C e2e.smokes.config.js --browser firefox --headless --url 'https://www.threatdragon.com/'

Run test:e2e-smokes:local

This suite of tests is similar to test:e2e-smokes but does not use BrowserStack for various browser tests - just chrome. The target is an existing application running at http://localhost:8080/ along with the documentation pages at http://localhost:8080/docs/.

To run these tests there first has to be a running web application, for example:

  • from directory td.vue invoke npm run dev
  • wait for the web app to be accessible on http://localhost:8080/

From a separate terminal in directory td.vue run command npm run test:e2e-smokes:local .

This will open the cypress runner application. This suite of tests uses cypress configuration file e2e.smokes.local.config.js, with the suite of tests loaded from tests/e2e/specs/smokes.

Pipeline test:e2e-ci-smokes

This suite of tests is similar to test:e2e-smokes but is run in headless mode so that it can be used for the CI pipeline. It uses cypress configuration file e2e.smokes.ci.config.js with the suite of tests loaded from tests/e2e/specs/smokes.

It is run against an existing application on http://localhost:3000/, using port 3000 rather than 8080.

For local testing of this script, an instance of the docker file can be used to map ports 3000. Decide on the docker image to test, for example owasp/threat-dragon:stable or threatdragon/owasp-threat-dragon:PR-943.

  • from top directory run docker run -it --rm -p 3000:3000 -v $(pwd)/.env:/app/.env owasp-threat-dragon:dev or if not using an environment variable file then run a docker container using:
docker run -d --rm \
    -p 3000:3000 \
    -e ENCRYPTION_JWT_REFRESH_SIGNING_KEY='***' \
    -e ENCRYPTION_JWT_SIGNING_KEY='***' \
    -e ENCRYPTION_KEYS='***' \
    -e GITHUB_CLIENT_ID='***' \
    -e GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET='***' \
    -e NODE_ENV='development' \
    --platform linux/x86_64 \
    -e SERVER_API_PROTOCOL='http' \
    threatdragon/owasp-threat-dragon:PR-943
  • check the web app is accessible on http://localhost:3000/
  • from directory td.vue invoke npm run test:e2e-ci-smokes

These tests are used by the CI pipeline to determine if the deploy to Heroku was successful or not.

Cypress use of Electron

Cypress uses the Electron server as a backend server, and has the Electron browser/renderer built in. When running locally some tests do not (as of Cypress version 12.x) run correctly. This means that it is good to choose a browser that is not Electron from the UI, and that those scripts that run in headless mode specify a different browser (such as Firefox).

This is not a problem with the BrowserStack tests because a specific browser is configured for each test run.

Writing e2e tests

If you are new to cypress, we strongly suggest reading through the Introduction to Cypress. The introduction document is a bit lengthy, but does a good job of preparing you to begin writing tests using cypress.

Note that

  • td.vue/e2e.ci.config.js and td.vue/e2e.smokes.ci.config.js are used by the CI pipeline on pull-request and merge
  • td.vue/e2e.smokes.config.js is used by the CI pipeline on merge/deploy
  • td.vue/e2e.nightly.config.js is for the scheduled daily tests
  • td.vue/e2e.local.config.js and td.vue/e2e.smokes.local.config.js are useful in a local development environment

Running Desktop e2e tests

The desktop application has end-to-end tests that can be run using npm run test:e2e:desktop from td.vue directory.