Gitlab continuous integration testing with Selenium

Question

I am working on a project to build, test and deploy an application to the cloud using a .gitlab-ci.yml

1) Build the backend and frontend using pip install and npm install

build_backend:
  image: python
  stage: build
  script:
  - pip install requirements.txt
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - backend/

build_frontend:
  image: node
  stage: build
  script:
  - npm install
  - npm run build
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - frontend

2) Run unit and functional tests using PyUnit and Python Selenium

test_unit:
  image: python
  stage: test
  script:
    - python -m unittest discover

test_functional:
  image: python
  stage: test
  services:
    - selenium/standalone-chrome
  script:
    - python tests/example.py http://selenium__standalone-chrome:4444/wd/hub https://$CI_BUILD_REF_SLUG-dot-$GAE_PROJECT.appspot.com

3) Deploy to Google Cloud using the sdk

deploy:
  image: google/cloud-sdk
  stage: deploy
  environment:
    name: $CI_BUILD_REF_NAME
    url: https://$CI_BUILD_REF_SLUG-dot-$GAE_PROJECT.appspot.com
  script:
    - echo $GAE_KEY > /tmp/gae_key.json
    - gcloud config set project $GAE_PROJECT
    - gcloud auth activate-service-account --key-file /tmp/gae_key.json
    - gcloud --quiet app deploy --version $CI_BUILD_REF_SLUG --no-promote
  after_script:
    - rm /tmp/gae_key.json

This all runs perfectly, except for the selenium tests are run on the deployed url not the current build:

python tests/example.py http://selenium__standalone-chrome:4444/wd/hub https://$CI_BUILD_REF_SLUG-dot-$GAE_PROJECT.appspot.com

I need to have gitlab run three things simultaneously: a) Selenium b) Python server with the application - Test script

Possible approaches to run the python server:

Run within the same terminal commands as the test script somehow
Docker in Docker
Service

Any advice, or answers would be greatly appreciated!

user_1417449 · Answer

I wrote a blog post on how I set up web tests for a php application. Ok PHP, but I guess something similar can be done for a python project.

What I did, was starting a php development server from within the container that runs the web tests. Because of the artifacts, the development server can access the php files. I figure out the IP address of the container, and using this IP address the selenium/standalone-chrome container can connect back to the development server.

I created a simple demo-project, you can check out the .gitlab-ci.yml file. Note that I pinned the selenium container to an old version; this was because of an issue with an old version of the php webdriver package, today this isn't needed anymore.

Gitlab continuous integration testing with Selenium

1 Answers