NPM start-server-and-test

Starts server, waits for URL, then runs test command; when the tests end, shuts down server

Install

Requires Node version 8.9 or above.

npm install --save-dev start-server-and-test

Use

This command is meant to be used with NPM script commands. If you have a "start server", and "test" script names for example, you can start the server, wait for a url to respond, then run tests. When the test process exits, the server is shut down.

{
    "scripts": {
        "start-server": "npm start",
        "test": "mocha e2e-spec.js",
        "ci": "start-server-and-test start-server http://localhost:8080 test"
    }
}

To execute all tests simply run npm run ci.

Commands

In addition to using NPM script names, you can pass entire commands (surround them with quotes so it is still a single string) that will be executed "as is". For example, to start globally installed http-server before running and recording Cypress.io tests you can use

# run http-server, then when port 8000 responds run Cypress tests
start-server-and-test 'http-server -c-1 --silent' 8000 './node_modules/.bin/cypress run --record'

Because npm scripts execute with ./node_modules/.bin in the $PATH, you can mix global and locally installed tools when using commands inside package.json file. For example, if you want to run a single spec file:

{
  "scripts": {
    "ci": "start-server-and-test 'http-server -c-1 --silent' 8080 'cypress run --spec cypress/integration/location.spec.js'"
  }
}

Or you can move http-server part into its own start script, which is used by default and have the equivalent JSON

{
  "scripts": {
    "start": "http-server -c-1 --silent",
    "ci": "start-server-and-test 8080 'cypress run --spec cypress/integration/location.spec.js'"
  }
}

Here is another example that uses Mocha

{
  "scripts": {
    "ci": "start-server-and-test 'http-server -c-1 --silent' 8080 'mocha e2e-spec.js'"
  }
}

Alias

You can use either start-server-and-test, server-test or start-test commands in your scripts.

You can use : in front of port number like server-test :8080, so all these are equivalent

start-server-and-test start http://localhost:8080 test
server-test start http://localhost:8080 test
server-test http://localhost:8080 test
start-test :8080 test
start-test 8080 test
start-test 8080

Options

If you use convention and name your scripts "start" and "test" you can simply provide URL

{
    "scripts": {
        "start": "npm start",
        "test": "mocha e2e-spec.js",
        "ci": "start-server-and-test http://localhost:8080"
    }
}

You can also shorten local url to just port, the code below is equivalent to checking http://localhost:8080.

{
    "scripts": {
        "start": "npm start",
        "test": "mocha e2e-spec.js",
        "ci": "server-test 8080"
    }
}

You can provide first start command, port (or url) and implicit test command

{
    "scripts": {
        "start-it": "npm start",
        "test": "mocha e2e-spec.js",
        "ci": "server-test start-it 8080"
    }
}

You can provide port number and custom test command, in that case npm start is assumed to start the server.

{
    "scripts": {
        "start": "npm start",
        "test-it": "mocha e2e-spec.js",
        "ci": "server-test :9000 test-it"
    }
}