CODEWITHSUNDEEP
automated-testse2e-testingtestcafebrowser-automationweb-testing
Gurpinder Sandhu
Gurpinder Sandhu

Reputation: 3

What's the progress or direction on --disable-page-reloads flag in testcafe?

We are introducing E2E tests in some of our Single Page Applications (SPA) and are really inclined towards using testcafe for it. Since SPA's take a long time to load and provide fast subsequent navigation we are using experimental disablePageReload feature in testcafe because without it the tests take too much time to be usable.

I followed this issue #1770 and wanted to ask this question there but the comments have been disabled.

On the issues mentioned by a collaborator in the link above on why this feature is experimental, my thoughts are as below (collaborator comment with my thoughts)

  1. We assume that it's hard to write tests so that they don't require page reloads, which makes this feature difficult to use.

    • On some level this is true, but in SPA we rely on the framework to do the navigation and a simple state or route reload effectively makes the tests independent. Of course, there could be some application state that could linger on a state or route reload but that is something the application owners have already taken into account. Once a decision to write a SPA is taken, it's expected that users are using the framework navigation instead of full-page reloads inside their own browsers

  2. We think that writing tests in such a way affect their stability.

    • Yes in case of memory leaks or other interference between tests, there could be some instability between tests but achieving stability by page reloads would be a fake one. SPA users are expected to have long sessions without reloads, which means the tests should be independent without page reloads.

  3. There are some aspects of this feature that aren't finished yet. For example, using this feature when tests are run concurrently.

    • This is something I would like details on. I have successfully used concurrent tests in my small pilot project. But this is something the collaborators must understand better.

I only want to know, if there is some direction on this feature to be officially implemented or this will be removed eventually. It's very important for the decision at my company.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 422

Answers (1)

Helen Dikareva
Helen Dikareva

Reputation: 1036

Thank you for sharing your own view of this feature. Currently, we still receive messages from users interested in its official implementation. So, we decided to continue working on developing this functionality, but, at the moment, I cannot give you any estimates on when the feature will be published.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions