TestCafe Advanced Configuration

Using Node.js Runtime on Sauce Cloud

Since saucectl v0.185.0, you can specify a Node.js runtime version on Sauce Cloud.

Only supported test runners can use configurable Node.js versions. Check the following pages for supported framework versions.

• Cypress
• Playwright
• Playwright-Cucumber
• TestCafe

Supported Node.js Versions

Sauce Labs supports the following Node.js versions:

Node.js Version	Alias	End of Life	Removal Date
20.14.0	iron, lts	October 22, 2024	April 30, 2026

Environment Variable Expansion

All values in your saucectl configuration support environment variable expansion. $var in config.yml will be replaced according to your shell's environment variables. References to undefined variables will be replaced with an empty string.

Predefined Environment Variables

The following environment variables are available during test execution.

Environment Variable	Description
SAUCE_JOB_ID	Job ID
SAUCE_SUITE_NAME	Suite Name
SAUCE_ARTIFACTS_DIRECTORY	Absolute path to the artifacts directory. Files placed in this folder are persisted with the Job.

Tailoring Your Test File Bundle

The saucectl command line bundles your root directory (rootDir parameter of config.yml) and transmits it to the Sauce Labs cloud, then unpacks the bundle and runs the tests. This functionality is partly what allows Sauce Control to operate in a framework-agnostic capacity. However, you can and should manage the inclusion and exclusion of files that get bundled to optimize performance and ensure security.

Excluding Files from the Bundle

The .sauceignore file allows you to designate certain files to be excluded from bundling.

Add any files that are not direct test dependencies to .sauceignore to reduce the size of your bundle, improve test speed, and protect sensitive information.

Examples of what can be included in .sauceignore:

# .sauceignore

# Ignore node_modules
node_modules/

# Ignore all log files
*.log

# Ignore executables/binaries
*.exe
*.bin
**/*/bin

# Ignore media files
*.png
*.jpeg
*.jpg
*.mp4

# Ignore documentation
*.rst
*.md

# Ignore sensitive data
credentials.yml

Sometimes it's easier to do the inverse: Including files for the bundle.

# Ignore all files by default.
/*

# Re-include files we selectively want as part of the payload by prefixing the lines with '!'.
!/node_modules
!/cypress
!cypress.config.js

# Since the whole '/cypress' folder is now included, this would also include any
# subdirectories that potentially contain auto-generated test artifacts from
# the local dev environment.
# It'd be wasteful to include them in the payload, so let's ignore those subfolders.
/cypress/videos/
/cypress/results/
/cypress/screenshots/

Including Node Dependencies

The default .sauceignore file lists node_modules/ so locally installed node dependencies are excluded from the bundle. If your tests require node dependencies to run, you can either:

• Include node_modules with your bundle or
• Set NPM packages in config.yml

Remove "node_modules" from .sauceignore

Delete or comment out node_modules/ in your .sauceignore file to bundle your node dependencies. For example,

# Do NOT exclude node_modules from bundle
# node_modules/

Node dependencies can increase your bundle by potentially hundreds of megabytes, so consider including only the required dependencies rather than the entire node_modules directory. The following sections provide some methods for limiting the scope of dependencies you must include.

Install "devDependencies" Only

Consider only installing NPM devDependencies if your tests do not require all prod dependencies.

# Only install dev dependencies
npm install --only=dev

saucectl run

Uninstall Nonessential Dependencies

If your standard install includes dependencies that aren't needed to run your tests, uninstall them prior to bundling.

# Install node dependencies
npm ci # or "npm install"

# Remove unneeded dependencies
npm uninstall appium
npm uninstall express

saucectl run

Install Essential Dependencies Individually

If you know that your tests require only specific dependencies, install them individually instead of running npm install or npm ci.

# Install individual dependencies
npm install playwright-xpath

saucectl run

Set NPM Packages in config.yml

You can avoid installing or uninstalling dependencies prior to each bundling operation by defining a default set of NPM packages to install in your sauce configuration file using the npm parameter, as shown in the following example:

npm:
  registries:
    - url: https://registry.npmjs.org
  usePackageLock: true
  packages:
    "lodash": "4.17.20"

Setting usePackageLock: true will in most cases reduce the time required for installation.

Alternatively, you can let saucectl selectively include already installed dependencies from the node_modules folder.

npm:
  dependencies:
    - lodash

If a package.json file is specified, saucectl will automatically include all locally installed dependencies and devDependencies listed in the package.json file. While this may seem convenient at first, it can lead to long startup times if the package.json file includes dependencies that are not strictly required for the test run.

npm:
  dependencies:
    - "package.json"

Attaching Test Assets

By default, any test assets created by your tests at runtime (such as logs, screenshots or reports) you wish to retain along with your test results must be placed in the __assets__ directory of your project root folder. On Sauce Labs VMs, this path is relative to the current working directory.

Attaching entire directories

In situations where you want to preserve the file structure of your assets (e.g. a multi-page HTML report), you can use the retain feature to define a directory to archive and store as a test asset.

Handling nested assets

Nested assets are stored flat in Sauce Labs. A test asset like __assets__/mylogs/log.txt would therefore be stored and available for download as log.txt. Please keep that in mind when creating custom assets, as examples like __assets__/mylogs/log.txt and __assets__/myotherlogs/log.txt would eventually collide when persisted.

For Cypress and Playwright, there are cases where you may want to override this default behavior; e.g. your test framework generates an HTML report and you want to preserve the entire report directory and don't want the individual files to be flattened and automatically attached as described above. In that case, you can set an environment variable in your saucectl config to opt out of the default behaviour. When set, the configured output directory for the test run will be honoured; e.g. it won't be overridden to __assets__/.

artifacts:
  retain:
    report-directory: archived-report.zip

env:
  SAUCE_SYNC_WEB_ASSETS: "true"

When configured this way, the directory named report-directory will be archived as archived-report.zip. To maintain backwards compatibility with our UI, some asset types (e.g. images, logs, etc.) in report-directory will still be automatically copied over to __assets__/ and attached to the test results.

Setting up a Proxy

If you need to go through a proxy server, you can set it through the following variables:

• HTTP_PROXY: Proxy to use to access HTTP websites
• HTTPS_PROXY: Proxy to use to access HTTPS websites

Setting a Custom Firefox Profile

If you ever have the need to mock video streams, such as a webcam, the browser needs to be configured accordingly. Firefox does not provide a browser arg to enable all flags necessary—they have to be set via the profile settings.

This example illustrates how you can configure saucectl to make use of an existing preconfigured browser profile.