Cypress Visual Regression

Module for adding visual regression testing to Cypress.

Getting Started

Install:

$ npm install cypress-visual-regression

Add the following config to your cypress.config.js file:

const { defineConfig } = require("cypress");
const getCompareSnapshotsPlugin = require('cypress-visual-regression/dist/plugin');

module.exports = defineConfig({
  screenshotsFolder: './cypress/snapshots/actual',
  trashAssetsBeforeRuns: true,
  video: false,
  e2e: {
    setupNodeEvents(on, config) {
      getCompareSnapshotsPlugin(on, config);
    },
  },
});

Add the command to cypress/support/commands.js:

const compareSnapshotCommand = require('cypress-visual-regression/dist/command');

compareSnapshotCommand();

Make sure you import commands.js in cypress/support/e2e.js:

import './commands'

TypeScript

If you're using TypeScript, use files with a .ts extension, as follows:

cypress/cypress.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress';
import getCompareSnapshotsPlugin from 'cypress-visual-regression/dist/plugin';

export default defineConfig({
  env: {
    screenshotsFolder: './cypress/snapshots/actual',
    trashAssetsBeforeRuns: true,
    video: false
  },
  e2e: {
    setupNodeEvents(on, config) {
      getCompareSnapshotsPlugin(on, config);
    },
  },
});

cypress/support/commands.ts

import compareSnapshotCommand from 'cypress-visual-regression/dist/command';

compareSnapshotCommand();

cypress/tsconfig.json

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "types": [
      "cypress",
      "cypress-visual-regression"
    ]
  }
}

For more info on how to use TypeScript with Cypress, please refer to this document.

Options

failSilently is enabled by default. Add the following config to your cypress.config.js file to see the errors:

{
  env: {
    failSilently: false
  }
}

You can also pass default arguments to compareSnapshotCommand():

const compareSnapshotCommand = require('cypress-visual-regression/dist/command');

compareSnapshotCommand({
  capture: 'fullPage'
});

These will be used by default when no parameters are passed to the compareSnapshot command.

Configure snapshot paths

You can control where snapshots should be located by setting two environment variables:

The actual directory always points to the configured screenshot directory.

For more information regarding INTEGRATION_FOLDER please refer to PR#139

Configure snapshot generation

In order to control the creation of diff images you may want to use the following environment variables which are typically set by using the field env in configuration in cypress.config.json.

ALWAYS_GENERATE_DIFF specifies if diff images are generated for successful tests. If you only want the tests to create diff images based on your threshold without the tests to fail, you can set ALLOW_VISUAL_REGRESSION_TO_FAIL. If this variable is set, diffs will be computed using your thresholds but tests will not fail if a diff is found.

If you want to see all diff images which are different (based on your thresholds), use the following in your cypress.config.json:

{
  "env": {
    "ALWAYS_GENERATE_DIFF": false,
    "ALLOW_VISUAL_REGRESSION_TO_FAIL": true
  }
}

To Use

Add cy.compareSnapshot('home'); in your tests specs whenever you want to test for visual regressions, making sure to replace home with a relevant name. You can also add an optional error threshold: Value can range from 0.00 (no difference) to 1.00 (every pixel is different). So, if you enter an error threshold of 0.51, the test would fail only if > 51% of pixels are different.

More examples:

Sample:

it('should display the login page correctly', () => {
  cy.visit('/03.html');
  cy.get('H1').contains('Login');
  cy.compareSnapshot('login', 0.0);
  cy.compareSnapshot('login', 0.1);
});

You can target a single HTML element as well:

cy.get('#my-header').compareSnapshot('just-header')

You can pass arguments as an object to cy.compareSnapshot(), rather than just an error threshold, as well:

it('should display the login page correctly', () => {
  cy.visit('/03.html');
  cy.compareSnapshot('login', {
    capture: 'fullPage',
    errorThreshold: 0.1
  });
});

Looking for more examples? Review docker/cypress/e2e/main.cy.js.

Take the base images:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/cypress run --env type=base --config screenshotsFolder=cypress/snapshots/base,testFiles=\"**/*regression-tests.js\"

# use comma separated format for multiple config commands
$ ./node_modules/.bin/cypress run \
  --env type=base \
  --config screenshotsFolder=cypress/snapshots/base,testFiles=\"**/*regression-tests.js\"

Find regressions:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/cypress run --env type=actual

Example

Tips & Tricks

Ignore some elements

Following function creates a command that allows you to hide elements of the page based on their className:

/**
 * To be called after you setup the command, in order to add a
 * hook that does stuff before the command is triggered
 */
function beforeCompareSnapshotCommand(
  /** Element you want to ignore */
  ignoredElementsQuerySelector: string,
  /** Main app element (if you want for the page to be loaded before triggering the command) */
  appContentQuerySelector: string = "body"
) {
  Cypress.Commands.overwrite("compareSnapshot", (originalFn, ...args) => {
    return cy
      // wait for content to be ready
      .get(appContentQuerySelector)
      // hide ignored elements
      .then($app => {
        return new Cypress.Promise((resolve, reject) => {
          setTimeout(() => {
            $app.find(ignoredElementsQuerySelector).css("visibility", "hidden");
            resolve();
            // add a very small delay to wait for the elements to be there, but you should
            // make sure your test already handles this
          }, 300);
        });
      })
      .then(() => {
        return originalFn(...args);
      });
  });
}

module.exports = beforeCompareSnapshotCommand;

You may then use this function like below:

const compareSnapshotCommand = require("cypress-visual-regression/dist/command");
const beforeCompareSnapshotCommand = require("./commands/beforeCompareSnapshots");
compareSnapshotCommand({
  errorThreshold: 0.1
});
// add a before hook to compareSnapshot (this must be called AFTER compareSnapshotCommand() so the command can be overriden)
beforeCompareSnapshotCommand(
  ".chromatic-ignore,[data-chromatic='ignore']",
  "._app-content"
);

In this example, we ignore the elements that are also ignored by 3rd party tool Chromatic.