10 Advanced Protractor topics
This chapter covers
- Protractor configuration files
- Screenshot testing
- Debugging tests
Protractor is a powerful tool, and, like any powerful tool, you can use it in more creative ways than you’ll find written in the manual. As developers working on Protractor, we’ve found that people tend to ask about certain common scenarios. Some common questions are “How do I extend Protractor’s behavior with plugins?” and “How do I create screenshots when my tests fail?” We’ve collected our best tips for working with Protractor in this chapter to help you get the most out of your end-to-end tests. You can find the examples in this chapter at http://mng.bz/83kr.
10.1 Configuration file in depth
Protractor provides many knobs and levers that change how it launches based on configuration options. In chapter 8, you used one way to run Protractor tests. You started Protractor from the command line, using a Chrome instance running on your own machine. This configuration is fine for testing during development, but what if you need to test on a different browser or a set of browsers? How can you set up tests to run in a continuous integration environment without a GUI?