| title | description | tags | categories | type | permalink | contributors | date | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Using Wraith for Visual Regression Testing |
Learn how to use Wraith for visual regression testing with composite images. |
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guide |
docs/guides/:basename/ |
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5/29/2015 |
Theme changes, particularly CSS changes, can have unexpected consequences that make visual mistakes hard to spot. Visual regression testing uses screenshot comparisons to automatically detect changes and report them back to you. This guide will show you how to use Wraith to test CSS, layout, graphical and other visual changes on your Pantheon websites using visual regression.
Wraith works by crawling two websites, taking screenshots of both, and then comparing them pixel by pixel with an image comparison tool. This process produces sets of composite images, also known as visual diffs, that illustrate changes.
In the following example, the accidental removal of the date field on the lower right caused spacing and other changes. These changes were automatically detected and highlighted in red.
To begin, you will need to install a scriptable browser without a viewport which allows Wraith to crawl websites and take screenshots. Wraith fully supports PhantomJS for versions between 1.82 and 1.9.8.
Wraith needs the ImageMagick library to do image comparisons. Additionally, Wraith can use CasperJS to isolate and compare portions of a website with CSS selectors. This is super useful for comparing sites with dynamic content. When installing CasperJS, it's important to use the latest version.
Install via Homebrew:
brew install phantomjs198
brew install imagemagick
brew install casperjs --devel
On Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install phantomjs
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
npm install -g casperjs
Wraith runs on the command line and installs as a Ruby gem. If you're running Wraith on Linux, you may need to install Ruby first. To install Wraith, run the following command:
gem install wraith
Wraith should now be accessible from the command line.
$ wraith
Commands:
wraith capture [config_name] # A full Wraith job
wraith compare_images [config_name] # compares images to generate diffs
wraith copy_base_images [config_name] # copies the required base images over for comparison with latest images
wraith crop_images [config_name] # crops images to the same height
wraith generate_gallery [config_name] # create page for viewing images
wraith generate_thumbnails [config_name] # create thumbnails for gallery
wraith help [COMMAND] # Describe available commands or one specific command
wraith history [config_name] # Setup a baseline set of shots
wraith latest [config_name] # Capture new shots to compare with baseline
wraith multi_capture [filelist] # A Batch of Wraith Jobs
wraith reset_shots [config_name] # removes all the files in the shots folder
wraith save_images [config_name] # captures screenshots
wraith setup # creates config folder and default config
wraith setup_folders [config_name] # create folders for images
wraith validate [config_name] # checks your configuration and validates that all required properties exist
See Wraith's installation guide to install on Windows.
Wraith stores its configuration within a self-generated YAML file. To set this up, we'll first have to create a directory to store your Wraith configuration files:
mkdir wraith
cd wraith
Next, use the wraith setup command to generate a Wraith YAML configuration file and browser navigation script:
wraith setup
You should see the following output:
create configs
create configs/capture.yaml
create configs/history.yaml
create configs/spider.yaml
create javascript
create javascript/cookies_and_headers--casper.js
create javascript/cookies_and_headers--phantom.js
create javascript/disable_javascript--casper.js
create javascript/disable_javascript--phantom.js
create javascript/interact--casper.js
create javascript/interact--phantom.js
create javascript/wait--casper.js
create javascript/wait--phantom.js
Notice that Wraith also created the JavaScript file javascript/wait--phantom.js, which is a browser navigation script for PhantomJS. This script can be modified to increase the reliability of your screenshot captures by changing the browser timeout from two seconds to ten.
Open the javascript/wait--phantom.js file in an editor, scroll to the end, and replace the number 2000 with 10000.
// ######################################################
// This is an example module provided by Wraith.
// Feel free to amend for your own requirements.
// ######################################################
module.exports = function (phantom, ready) {
// make Wraith wait a bit longer before taking the screenshot
setTimeout(ready, 10000); // you MUST call the ready() callback for Wraith to continue
}Next, the configs/capture.yaml file will need to be modified to crawl and capture your websites. For this guide I'm comparing a default installation of Panopoly on my Pantheon Dev and Test environments.
Open configs/capture.yaml, go to the domains label, and change the default values to two websites you want to visually compare.
domains:
dev: "https://dev-panopoly-dreams.pantheon.io"
test: "https://test-panopoly-dreams.pantheon.io"You also need to add navigation paths in configs/capture.yaml for Wraith to crawl. In the following example, I've edited the paths: to remove the default about and contact items and added some additional pages for Wraith to compare.
paths:
home: "/"
login: "/user/login"
great-vegetables: "/content/great-vegetables"
lovely-vegetables: "/content/lovely-vegetables"Next, update the global before_capture: hook and replace its value with the javascript/wait--phantom.js script you updated.
# (optional) JavaScript file to execute before taking screenshot of every path. Default: nil
#before_capture: 'javascript/disable_javascript--phantom.js'
before_capture: 'javascript/wait--phantom.js'YAML is space sensitive. Domain and Path entries in the code snippets above should be spaced as illustrated within your local editor.
Finally, execute Wraith:
wraith capture capture
Wraith will navigate your two websites and generate an image comparison gallery. Open wraith/shots/gallery.html in any web browser to view the results. You can do this by using the browser application (e.g. File > Open File) or by running the following command from within the wraith directory:
open shots/gallery.html
Wraith can capture portions of a website with CSS selectors and display them in the gallery alongside full page captures. This feature is useful to isolate static content when testing pages with dynamic functionality.
The latest development version of CasperJS is required to use CSS selectors with Wraith. Please see the above Install section for instructions.
First, edit configs/capture.yaml to change the browser: setting to casperjs.
# (required) The engine to run Wraith with. Examples: 'phantomjs', 'casperjs', 'slimerjs'
browser: "casperjs"Edit the new configuration file, configs/capture.yaml, to add selectors to the paths. Note the path format has changed to support URL components with selectors.
domains:
dev: "https://dev-panopoly-dreams.pantheon.io"
test: "https://test-panopoly-dreams.pantheon.io"
...
paths:
home:
path: "/"
selector: "#header"To increase the reliability of the screenshot captures, tweak the capture time in javascript/wait--casper.js. Change the timeout from 2000 to 10000.
// ######################################################
// This is an example module provided by Wraith.
// Feel free to amend for your own requirements.
// ######################################################
module.exports = function (phantom, ready) {
// make Wraith wait a bit longer before taking the screenshot
setTimeout(ready, 10000); // you MUST call the ready() callback for Wraith to continue
}Finally, tweak the before_capture: line in configs/capture.yaml to use the CasperJS wait script.
# (optional) JavaScript file to execute before taking screenshot of every path. Default: nil
before_capture: 'javascript/wait--casper.js'Run Wraith to produce a new gallery from the selectors. To execute this Wraith test, run the following command:
wraith capture capture
Wraith supports capturing and comparing a single website against previous revisions of itself with a history mode. To set it up, edit the YAML configuration file to remove one of the domains and add a history_dir folder.
domains:
dev: "https://dev-panopoly-dreams.pantheon.io"
...
# (required) The directory that your screenshots will be stored in
directory: "shots"
history_dir: "shots_history"The command wraith history will populate history_dir with a baseline set of images and the command wraith latest will compare them against the current website.
Wraith's output can be hooked into your continuous integration setup and/or build notification tools. When Wraith performs comparisons, it creates a folder for each of the path keys in your configuration file. These folders contain the comparison images along with a text file specifying the amount of numeric change between them. If any of these numbers are greater than zero, a change has been detected and your scripts can react accordingly.
More browser options and tweaks can be made by modifying the navigation scripts and configuration files. Possibilities include specifying custom viewport heights, loading pages without JavaScript, or even the page capture timeout modifications described previously in this guide. Examples are located in the Wraith GitHub repository under configs and javascript.
Wraith also supports captures with Firefox through SlimerJS as well as additional YAML configuration options not described here. More information is available in the Wraith GitHub repository.