Nightwatch.js – Testmo

Testmo works with any test automation tool, including the popular Nightwatch.js JavaScript end-to-end testing framework. This quickstart guide provides an overview of how to report Nightwatch.js test automation results to Testmo.

Recommended: Using Nightwatch.js with Mocha
Nightwatch.js also supports Mocha as its unit testing framework. This is recommended, as this supports more features using Mocha's JUnit reporter (including custom fields, outputs & attachments). You can learn more in our Mocha documentation.

Run Nightwatch.js & generate XML file

Nightwatch.js comes with full support for generating JUnit-style XML files, which has become a standard format to exchange test results between tools.

$ nightwatch --output ./results --reporter=junit

If you use Nightwatch.js with Mocha, please refer to our Mocha documentation instead.

This will run your Nightwatch.js tests and automatically write all test results to XML files in the results directory. You can learn more about configuring the JUnit reporter in the Nightwatch.js documentation.

Submit test results to Testmo

To submit your test results to Testmo, you simply use our cross-platform testmo CLI tool. The CLI tool is distributed as an NPM package and is easy to install on any system. Simply install our official @testmo/testmo-cli NPM package:

$ npm install -g @testmo/testmo-cli
$ testmo -h

Usage: testmo [options] [command]
[...]

We can now send the Nightwatch.js test results to Testmo. To do this, make sure to generate an API key in Testmo from your profile page. The API key is used to authenticate with Testmo to send the results. We can then use the testmo CLI tool so submit our results (note that we first set the TESTMO_TOKEN variable, which the tool expects):

Full example

Single line

Windows

$ export TESTMO_TOKEN=********
$ testmo automation:run:submit \
  --instance https://<your-name>.testmo.net \
  --project-id 1 \
  --name "Nightwatch test run" \
  --source "frontend" \
  --results results/*.xml

If you run this example on a single command line, make sure to remove the backspace:

$ export TESTMO_TOKEN=********
$ testmo automation:run:submit --instance https://<your-name>.testmo.net --project-id 1 --name "Nightwatch test run" --source "frontend" --results results/*.xml

On Windows, the command line uses a slightly different syntax to set a variable:

> set TESTMO_TOKEN=********
> testmo automation:run:submit --instance https://<your-name>.testmo.net --project-id 1 --name "Nightwatch test run" --source "frontend" --results results/*.xml

See command output

Collecting log files ..
Found 1 result file with a total of 855 tests
Created new automation run (ID: 254)
Created new thread (ID: 608)
Sending tests to Testmo ..
Uploading: [|||||||||||||||||||||||||] 100% | ETA: 0s | 855/855 tests
Successfully sent tests and completed run
Marked the run as completed

That's it! 🎉 This will automatically analyze the XML result file, create a new test run in Testmo, submit all tests & results and mark the run as completed. There's no need to manually create any tests, map tests or IDs or build any custom API code. Everything is handled automatically for you.

➡️ Bonus: Launch Nightwatch.js with Testmo CLI

In the above example, we first launched Nightwatch.js to generate the XML file and then used our CLI tool to submit the results in a second step. As an improvement to the above example, we can ask our CLI tool to launch Nightwatch.js (testmo then starts and waits for Nightwatch.js to finish). This has the following additional benefits:

a) Capture full console output and send it to Testmo

b) Accurately measure test times

c) Record the Nightwatch.js exit code

Launch Nightwatch.js with CLI tool

We can ask our CLI tool to launch Nightwatch.js, so we can capture the console output and more:

$ export TESTMO_TOKEN=********
$ testmo automation:run:submit \
  --instance https://<your-name>.testmo.net \
  --project-id 1 \
  --name "Nightwatch test run" \
  --source "frontend" \
  --results results/*.xml \
  -- nightwatch --output ./results --reporter=junit
    ^ space!

Also learn more and see other examples in the full Testmo CLI guide.

➡️ Bonus: Custom fields

Testmo also supports additional custom fields for test runs, threads and tests. You can learn more here:

If you would like to submit additional fields with your Nightwatch.js tests, we recommend using Nightwatch.js with Mocha and then see our instructions on using custom fields with Mocha. Testmo supports many automation field types including strings, links, rich HTML, steps and attachment links.

More resources & references

Now that you are familiar with submitting your Nightwatch.js test results to Testmo, you might also find the following additional examples, topics and references useful for more advanced workflows.