Visual regression testing

Faster, more user friendly visual regression testing. Used to tell a developer which components on a website have been affected by code changes, and gives a developer more visibility over a website. Involves three steps:

• Create reference screenshots.
• Create test screenshots.
• Compare the two to check if the test screenshots have changed.

What is the purpose of Ocularjs

• Super quick, can run 80 different tests in under 5 seconds.
• Should be used to provide quick, easy-to-read feedback on what components have changed.
• Removes the manual process of testing a whole site as it tells the user exactly what has changed.
• The user can then decide if the changes are correct or not.

To Run

• npm install ocularjs (-g for windows)
• ocularjs init
• ocularjs

Ocularjs init

This creates a folder called ocular in the directory in which the command is run. Inside this folder will be a data.json file which is where the settings for the project will be set.

Data.json

• PageUrl: This is the url that Ocularjs will open and take screenshots from, make sure all your components are on this page.
• Viewports: This is an object with a list of viewports, Ocularjs will open every viewport and take a screenshot for each component. This object can have a list of named viewports, each with an array containing screen width and screen height in that order.
• SelectorList: This contains the list of components that you want to take screenshots of, and each item requires a name and a selector. The selector can be a data attribute, class or and ID.

{
  "pageUrl": "http://localhost:7000/",
  "viewports": {
    "smallScreen": [320, 480],
    "mediumScreen_landscape": [768, 1024],
    "mediumScreen_portrait": [1024, 768],
    "largeScreen" : [1920, 1080]
  },
  "selectorList": {
    "containerOne": "[data-container-one]",
		"containerTwo": "[data-container-two]"
  }
}

Ocularjs

This will ask the user a question with three options:

• Reference: This will create the base screenshots for each component on each breakpoint. This will be stored in the ocular folder under screenshots/reference.
• Test: This will generate a second set of screenshots, for the same components and breakpoints as Reference. It will then compare the Test screenshots against the Reference screenshots and will tell the user which components have changed and what breakpoint they have changed on.
• Exit: This will exit out of the Ocularjs process and will not ask another question. Both of the other options will ask the question again once that process has been completed.