Cypress Advanced Configuration

Environment Variable Expansion

All values in your saucectl configuration support environment variable expansion. $var in config.yml will be replaced according to your shell's environment variables. References to undefined variables will be replaced with an empty string.

Predefined Environment Variables

The following environment variables are available during test execution.

Environment Variable	Description
SAUCE_JOB_ID	Job ID
SAUCE_SUITE_NAME	Suite Name
SAUCE_ARTIFACTS_DIRECTORY	Absolute path to the artifacts directory. Files placed in this folder are persisted with the Job.

Tailoring Your Test File Bundle

The saucectl command line bundles your root directory (rootDir parameter of config.yml) and transmits it to the Sauce Labs cloud, then unpacks the bundle and runs the tests. This functionality is partly what allows Sauce Control to operate in a framework-agnostic capacity. However, you can and should manage the inclusion and exclusion of files that get bundled to optimize performance and ensure security.

Excluding Files from the Bundle

The .sauceignore file allows you to designate certain files to be excluded from bundling.

Add any files that are not direct test dependencies to .sauceignore to reduce the size of your bundle, improve test speed, and protect sensitive information.

Examples of what can be included in .sauceignore:

# .sauceignore

# Ignore node_modules
node_modules/

# Ignore all log files
*.log

# Ignore executables/binaries
*.exe
*.bin
**/*/bin

# Ignore media files
*.png
*.jpeg
*.jpg
*.mp4

# Ignore documentation
*.rst
*.md

# Ignore sensitive data
credentials.yml

Sometimes it's easier to do the inverse: Including files for the bundle.

# Ignore all files by default.
/*

# Re-include files we selectively want as part of the payload by prefixing the lines with '!'.
!/node_modules
!/cypress
!cypress.config.js

# Since the whole '/cypress' folder is now included, this would also include any
# subdirectories that potentially contain auto-generated test artifacts from
# the local dev environment.
# It'd be wasteful to include them in the payload, so let's ignore those subfolders.
/cypress/videos/
/cypress/results/
/cypress/screenshots/

Including Node Dependencies

The default .sauceignore file lists node_modules/ so locally installed node dependencies are excluded from the bundle. If your tests require node dependencies to run, you can either:

• Include node_modules with your bundle or
• Set NPM packages in config.yml

Remove "node_modules" from .sauceignore

Delete or comment out node_modules/ in your .sauceignore file to bundle your node dependencies. For example,

# Do NOT exclude node_modules from bundle
# node_modules/

Node dependencies can increase your bundle by potentially hundreds of megabytes, so consider including only the required dependencies rather than the entire node_modules directory. The following sections provide some methods for limiting the scope of dependencies you must include.

Install "devDependencies" Only

Consider only installing NPM devDependencies if your tests do not require all prod dependencies.

# Only install dev dependencies
npm install --only=dev

saucectl run

Uninstall Nonessential Dependencies

If your standard install includes dependencies that aren't needed to run your tests, uninstall them prior to bundling.

# Install node dependencies
npm ci # or "npm install"

# Remove unneeded dependencies
npm uninstall appium
npm uninstall express

saucectl run

Install Essential Dependencies Individually

If you know that your tests require only specific dependencies, install them individually instead of running npm install or npm ci.

# Install individual dependencies
npm install playwright-xpath

saucectl run

Set NPM Packages in config.yml

You can avoid installing or uninstalling dependencies prior to each bundling operation by defining a default set of NPM packages to install in your sauce configuration file using the npm parameter, as shown in the following example:

npm:
  registries:
    - url: https://registry.npmjs.org
  packages:
    "lodash": "4.17.20"

Alternatively, you can let saucectl selectively include already installed dependencies from the node_modules folder.

npm:
  dependencies:
    - lodash

caution

This feature is highly experimental.

Attaching Test Assets

Any test assets created by your tests at runtime (such as logs, screenshots or reports) you wish to retain along with your test results must be placed in the __assets__ directory of your project root folder. On Sauce Labs VMs, this path is relative to the current working directory.

Nested Paths

Nested assets are stored flat in Sauce Labs. A test asset like __assets__/mylogs/log.txt would therefore be stored and available for download as log.txt. Please keep that in mind when creating custom assets, as examples like __assets__/mylogs/log.txt and __assets__/myotherlogs/log.txt would eventually collide when persisted.

Setting up a Proxy

If you need to go through a proxy server, you can set it through the following variables:

• HTTP_PROXY: Proxy to use to access HTTP websites
• HTTPS_PROXY: Proxy to use to access HTTPS websites

Filtering Tests

With cypress-grep you can add tags to test descriptions, then filter your tests with the tags or keywords.

    it('.type() - type into a DOM element', { tags: ['smoke'] }, () => {
      cy.get('.action-email')
        .type('fake@email.com').should('have.value', 'fake@email.com')
    })

For integration and setup details, see saucectl-cypress-example(v1) for Cypress 10 and above.

Filtering Tests Using Tags

You can pass env var grepTags to filter tests by tag.

saucectl run --env grepTags=@smoke

Filtering Tests Using Keywords

You can pass env var grep to filter tests by keyword.

saucectl run --env grep=".type()"

Filtering Tests Using Cucumber Tags

When running Cypress test along with Cucumber, you can use tags to select which test should run using Cucumber's tag expressions.

saucectl run --env CYPRESS_TAGS="(@smoke or @ui) and (not @slow)"

Component Testing

Component Testing is in beta and due to an issue from Cypress, saucectl doesn't currently support Component Testing.