Initializing test environment with nightwatch

[Riku Rouvila]

Is it somehow possible to initialize the test environment with nightwatch before running tests? Also closing it after tests would be necessary. 

This feature seems so basic that I'm having a hard time to understand whether there's no such feature in nightwatch or I'm I just missing something.

Is there a way to run asynchronous tasks in setUp and tearDown methods? 

My use case is basically just that I want to run my server, drop database and create fixture data before tests are run and close the server when nightwatch is finished with the tests. Can you give me an example how this is done?

[Andrei Rusu]

Currently setUp/tearDown are synchronous but you can create an async fixture as a custom command. More about this here: http://nightwatchjs.org/guide#custom-commands.

You can get an idea of how your command should look like by checking the pause command which is fairly simple:

https://github.com/beatfactor/nightwatch/blob/master/lib/selenium/commands/pause.js

Remember to emit a 'complete' event when your async stuff is finished (as seen in the pause command).

Here's a more complex example:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/nightwatchjs/3jBu5TMur04/wR-Ost2jhfsJ

It is a custom assertion, but custom commands are declared similarly. 

[Riku Rouvila]

Thanks! Ill try that and hopefully it will help me to implement my tests. 

[Andrei Rusu]

No problem, let me know if you have any more questions.

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[Jonathan Haggarty]

Is this a workaround or the suggested solution to solving these sorts of problems? Coupling commands on the browser object to things that have nothing to do with it feels a little strange to me but I might be missing something in my translation.

For example, one thing that would be quite nice in our world would be to start a small emulation server which returns fake, well-known, data to the browser before we execute any of our tests and then tearing it down after. This process itself has plenty of asynchronous points in it...

[Jonathan Haggarty]

Of course, it might be the only solution just now which is fine :)

Just trying to guage where your thoughts are in terms of incorporating this functionality into the framework generally...