We recommend running the tests in headless mode (with the browser windows hidden) and with a specific directory pattern and/or test name (-t
) which ensures only a small part of the test suite is run locally:
For example, running one test in the production test suite:
Running one test in the test/integration/production
test suite:
pnpm testheadless test/integration/production/ -t "should allow etag header support"
Running all tests in the test/integration/production
test suite:
pnpm testheadless test/integration/production/
When you want to debug a particular test you can replace pnpm testheadless
with pnpm testonly
to opt out of the headless browser.
When the test runs it will open the browser that is in the background by default, allowing you to inspect what is on the screen.
pnpm testonly test/integration/production/ -t "should allow etag header support"
You can set up a new test using pnpm new-test
which will start from a template related to the test type.
- e2e: Runs against
next dev
,next start
, and deployed to Vercel. - development: Runs against
next dev
. - production: Runs against
next start
. - integration: Historical location of tests. Runs misc checks and modes. Ideally, we don't add new test suites here anymore as these tests are not isolated from the monorepo.
- unit: Very fast tests that should run without a browser or run
next
and should be testing a specific utility.
For the e2e, development, and production tests the createNext
utility should be used and an example is available here. This creates an isolated Next.js install to ensure nothing in the monorepo is relied on accidentally causing incorrect tests.
All new test suites should be written in TypeScript either .ts
(or .tsx
for unit tests). This will help ensure we catch smaller issues in tests that could cause flakey or incorrect tests.
If a test suite already exists that relates closely to the item being tested (e.g. hash navigation relates to existing navigation test suites) the new checks can be added to the existing test suite.
- When checking for a condition that might take time, ensure it is waited for either using the browser
waitForElement
or using thecheck
util innext-test-utils
. - When applying a fix, ensure the test fails without the fix. This makes sure the test will properly catch regressions.
Some test-specific environment variables can be used to help debug isolated tests better, these can be leveraged by prefixing the pnpm test
command.
- When investigating failures in isolated tests you can use
NEXT_TEST_SKIP_CLEANUP=1
to prevent deleting the temp folder created for the test, then you can runpnpm next
while inside of the temp folder to debug the fully set-up test project. - You can also use
NEXT_SKIP_ISOLATE=1
if the test doesn't need to be installed to debug and it will run inside of the Next.js repo instead of the temp directory, this can also reduce test times locally but is not compatible with all tests. - The
NEXT_TEST_MODE
env variable allows toggling specific test modes for thee2e
folder, it can be used when not usingpnpm test-dev
orpnpm test-start
directly. Valid test modes can be seen here: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/blob/aa664868c102ddc5adc618415162d124503ad12e/test/lib/e2e-utils.ts#L46
When tests are run in CI and a test failure occurs we attempt to capture traces of the playwright run to make debugging the failure easier. A test-trace artifact should be uploaded after the workflow completes which can be downloaded, unzipped, and then inspected with pnpm playwright show-trace ./path/to/trace