remark42/e2e

End-to-end tests

Drives the widget in a real browser through playwright-go against a remark42 built from this checkout.

The import path is github.com/mxschmitt/playwright-go, which is what the module declares even though its repository is playwright-community/playwright-go. Do not rewrite it to match the repository URL: the versions that carry the matching path cannot install their driver.

Prerequisites

• Docker with compose, which the suite shells out to
• A Go toolchain matching e2e/go.mod
• Network access on the first run: the Playwright driver and the browsers are downloaded into the user cache directory, ~/.cache/… on Linux and ~/Library/Caches/… on macOS, and that download is the slowest part of a cold run

Running

make e2e

The suite brings the compose stack up itself when it does not find one already answering, and tears it down again afterwards. To keep the containers between runs, start them first:

make e2e-up
make e2e
make e2e-down

Run from e2e/; the compose path is relative to it. A single test:

cd e2e && go test -tags=e2e -run TestComment_ReplyNestsUnderItsParent -v ./...

make e2e-ui runs with a visible browser and leaves the stack up. The env vars behind it:

• E2E_HEADLESS=false shows the browser and slows it to 50ms a step
• E2E_KEEP=1 leaves the containers running afterwards, which only matters when the suite brought them up itself
• E2E_DEBUG=1 logs every HTTP response of status 400 or above
• E2E_BROWSERS=chromium narrows the engines the rendering tests use, which is the quickest way to shorten a local run

Rate-limit responses are logged whether or not E2E_DEBUG is set, because they surface otherwise as unexplained locator timeouts.

The build tag keeps these out of go test ./...; nothing runs without -tags=e2e.

When something fails

A failed test writes a Playwright trace to e2e/traces/, which CI uploads as an artifact. Nothing else writes one, so a run carrying the artifact is a run with a failure to look at. Open one with npx playwright show-trace e2e/traces/<name>.zip.

CI does not retry a failing test. The suite is young enough that a failure is evidence about the suite itself, and a retry is what would hide an intermittent regression. E2E_RUN_ID stamps the threads a run uses with the CI run id, so a thread url in a trace names the run it came from. It does not carry the data across: the stack is disposable, and a local run against the same id gets those urls on an empty database.

Beyond that: docker compose -f compose-e2e-test.yml logs for the server side, and mailpit's web UI on http://127.0.0.1:8025 for anything email.

Before pushing, cd e2e && go vet -tags=e2e ./... and golangci-lint run --build-tags=e2e --config ../backend/.golangci.yml. CI runs both, and neither is covered by a plain go vet ./... because of the build tag.

The stack

compose-e2e-test.yml at the repository root runs three services, each bound to the loopback interface since it holds a known secret and an admin shared id:

• remark42 on :8080, with the dev oauth2 provider on :8084, anonymous and email sign-in
• remark42-shortedit on :8081, with EDIT_TIME=15s and anonymous sign-in only, since the dev oauth2 provider's port is fixed at 8084 and cannot be published twice. It exists so the expired-edit path is observable without holding a test open for the default five minutes
• mailpit on :8025, which catches the email-auth verification message for the suite to read back

Three settings exist for the tests rather than for realism, and each is there for a reason:

• REMARK_URL uses a hostname, not 127.0.0.1. The dev oauth2 server binds whatever host it reads out of REMARK_URL (localBindAddr in go-pkgz/auth), and a loopback bind inside a container cannot be published. The browser maps the names back with --host-resolver-rules.
• UPDATE_LIMIT=100, because the default of 0.5 updates a second rejects any test that posts twice in a row.
• The suite paces its own calls to /auth/, which is limited to two requests a second by a bare literal at backend/app/rest/api/rest.go:242 rather than by a setting. See pauseForAuthLimit.

Isolation

Each test gets its own comment thread from a query string on the demo page, since the demo page passes window.location.href as remark_config.url and remark42 keys comments by it. A per-run id keeps threads apart from those an earlier run left behind.

Thread URLs deliberately keep the underscores a test name carries, since collapse persistence keys off the page url and a url containing an underscore is the case worth covering.

Browsers

The iframe_test.go group runs in Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. It is about rendering rather than logic: the widget holds the frame hidden until its document reports itself inited, and the opaque canvas that guards against is a WebKit behaviour, so Chromium alone would not exercise it.

Those tests address the server as 127.0.0.1 rather than by name, since --host-resolver-rules is a Chromium flag and they need no dev oauth2, which is the only reason the hostname exists.

Everything else runs in Chromium alone, for the same reason inverted: those tests sign in, sign-in needs the dev oauth2 provider, and reaching it by name from the host is Chromium-only. Running them in the other engines would mean putting the suite back inside the compose network.

Selectors

The production bundle strips data-testid, so tests use what ships: the stable class hooks the widget keeps outside CSS modules (.auth-button, .auth-submit, .comment-actions, .sort-picker, .preloader), title attributes on icon-only controls, and visible text. Three shapes are worth knowing:

• .auth only exists while signed out, so waiting on it hangs after sign-in. widget() waits on the comment form, which is present either way.
• Comments render through an IntersectionObserver, so one below the fold is an empty article with no text in it. That makes any absence assertion written as a text filter pass whether the comment is gone or merely off screen; count articles instead, which is what articleCount is for.
• Collapsing a thread hides the comment text, so a locator filtered by that text stops matching the element under test. TestThread_CollapsePersistsAcrossReload anchors on the comment's id instead.