Detox Plugin

Detox logo

Detox is gray box end-to-end testing and automation library for mobile apps. It has a lot of great features:

  • Cross Platform
  • Runs on Devices
  • Automatically Synchronized
  • Test Runner Independent
  • Debuggable

Setting Up Detox

Install applesimutils (Mac only)

applesimutils is a collection of utils for Apple simulators.

1brew tap wix/brew
2brew install applesimutils

Install Jest Globally

1npm install -g jest

Generating Applications

By default, when creating a mobile application, Nx will use Detox to create the e2e tests project.

nx g @nrwl/react-native:app frontend

Creating a Detox E2E project for an existing project

You can create a new Detox E2E project for an existing mobile project.

If the @nrwl/detox package is not installed, install the version that matches your @nrwl/workspace version.

1# yarn
2yarn add --dev @nrwl/detox
1# npm
2npm install --save-dev @nrwl/detox

Next, generate an E2E project based on an existing project.

1nx g @nrwl/detox:app your-app-name-e2e --project=your-app-name

Replace your-app-name with the app's name as defined in your workspace.json file.

In addition, you need to follow instructions at Detox to do manual setup for Android files.

Using Detox

Testing Applications

  • Run nx test-ios frontend-e2e to build the iOS app and execute e2e tests with Detox for iOS (Mac only)
  • Run nx test-android frontend-e2e to build the Android app and execute e2e tests with Detox for Android

You can run below commands:

  • nx build-ios frontend-e2e: build the iOS app (Mac only)
  • nx build-android frontend-e2e: build the Android app

Testing against Prod Build

You can run your e2e test against a production build:

  • nx test-ios frontend-e2e --prod: to build the iOS app and execute e2e tests with Detox for iOS with Release configuration (Mac only)
  • nx test-android frontend-e2e: rto build the Android app and execute e2e tests with Detox for Android with release build type
  • nx build-ios frontend-e2e --prod: build the iOS app using Release configuration (Mac only)
  • nx build-android frontend-e2e --prod: build the Android app using release build type

Configuration

Using .detoxrc.json

If you need to fine tune your Detox setup, you can do so by modifying .detoxrc.json in the e2e project.

Change Testing Simulator/Emulator

For iOS, in terminal, run xcrun simctl list to view a list of simulators on your Mac. To open your active simulator, run open -a simulator. In frontend-e2e/.detoxrc.json, you could change the simulator under devices.simulator.device.

For Android, in terminal, run emulator -list-avds to view a list of emulators installed. To open your emulator, run emulator -avd <your emulator name>. In frontend-e2e/.detoxrc.json, you could change the simulator under devices.emulator.device.

In additon, to override the device name specified in a configuration, you could use --device-name option: nx test-ios <app-name-e2e> --device-name "iPhone 11". The device-name property provides you the ability to test an application run on specific device.

nx test-ios frontend-e2e --device-name "iPhone 11"
nx test-android frontend-e2e --device-name "Pixel_4a_API_30"