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stranger

stranger is a visual testing framework to catch and report changes to the rendered layout of your pages. It runs with node.js and selenium.

Inspired by @jessicard's RailsConf talk on implementing a CSS testing framework, this is a somewhat similar solution but for node. You can run stranger to compare the current state of your site against a previously generated set of images. It uses configuration files, so you can run tests on different screen sizes, different browsers, different urls, etc.

For better or for worse (we think better), stranger tries to stay as unopinionated as possible. It has a nice set of defaults which can easily be overwritten. As it's able to be used through the command line or programmatically, it should be easy to use when running tests. It should also be pretty extensible.

In this readme

installation
example
cli
configuration
api
gotchas
contributing
license
todo

installation

It's imperative that you have both imagemagick and graphicsmagick installed. If you're running OS X, we recommend using brew to install them.

# If you have brew 
brew install imagemagick
brew install graphicsmagick

npm install -g stranger

example

Begin by creating a configuration file. It should be valid JSON and contain the allowed options

{
  "baseDir": "./test/desktop/master",
  "compareDir": "./test/desktop/branch",
  "diffDir": "./test/desktop/diff",
  "browser": "firefox",
  "tests": [
    {
      "url": "http://localhost/home",
      "name": "Home"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://localhost/about",
    },
    {
      "url": "./static/500.html",
      "local": true,
      "name": "500-page"
    }
  ]
}

Then, from the command line

# To generate the initial images 
stranger --generate --config ./basic.json
 
# To compare a set of images 
stranger --config ./basic.json

Or programmatically

var stranger = require('stranger')
var config = {...}
 
stranger(config, true, function (results) {
  // The results var is an object with a lot of cool deets. Check it out!
})

cli

Usage: stranger {OPTIONS}

Options:

  --config, -c  The configuration file to use.
                For an example config, type `stranger --help config`

--generate, -g  Whether to generate the base files or not.

    --help, -h  Show this message

configuration

Configuration options:

              baseDir: string  The path for the base images to be placed

           compareDir: string  The path for the comparison images to be placed

              diffDir: string  The path for any diff images to be placed

            [browser]: string  The browser to test with. Can be firefox,
                               chrome, ie, safari or opera. Defaults to firefox

     [browserOptions]: object  The options to configure the browser window

 browserOptions.width: number  The width of the browser. Defaults to 1024

browserOptions.height: number  The height of the browser. Defaults to 1024

      [chromeOptions]: object  The chrome options for selenium.
                               See: https://goo.gl/ZoCztN

     [firefoxOptions]: object  The firefox options for selenium.
                               See: https://goo.gl/74oFrD

          [ieOptions]: object  The ie options for selenium
                               See: https://goo.gl/3zmhPW

       [operaOptions]: object  The opera options for selenium
                               See: https://goo.gl/QKQHx5

      [safariOptions]: object  The safari options for selenium
                               See: https://goo.gl/DRK1oz

                tests: array   The test objects that stranger will
                               test against

             test.url: string  The url to point the browser to

          [test.name]: string  The filename to use for the screenshot. Optional

api

Stranger(config, generate, callback)

config
A json file that tells stranger how to run and where to place images

generate
A boolean denoting whether or not to generate the base images

callback
A function to run once stranger has finished. It passes a results object with a lot of useful details

gotchas

• You must have imagemagick installed. You can grab it from brew if you're on os x.
• The use of browsers aside from firefox require the webdriver. Check brew for the chrome driver, selenium drivers for the safari driver, and opera releases for the opera driver.
• As of Safari v8, Chrome v43, Opera v27, Firefox is the only browser that allows full page screenshots. Keep that in mind.
• If using safari, make sure your URL specifies the protocol (file://, https://, etc), otherwise, safari will timeout.
• If multiple browser support is needed, use different configs.
• Comparing images created from different monitors can cause diffs.
• As of right now, it can only capture static pages. No hover states or anything like that!

contributing

This project follows a couple of different standards.

• For git, we're using the github flow model.
• For writing javascript we're using the js-standard styleguide from feross.

When making contributions, add passing tests along with your PR.

license

Apache 2.0

todo

• Add multiple support for browsers within the same execution (can be done with multiple configs)
• Add multiple sizes support for browsers to test against
• Add support to define a prep function to run before it takes the screenshot (click a button, fill in a form, etc)