containerized-testing-suite · containers

Stream: containers

Topic: containerized-testing-suite

Ash Manda (Feb 24 2026 at 20:23):

Hello, Dataverse Team!

My name is Ash Manda. I am an MSCS student and a GRA working in the Infrastructure team of the Research Data Management Core here at UNC-CH. I'm currently working under @Don Sizemore on a variety of tasks involving Dataverse, primarily developing a containerized Playwright testing suite that plugs directly into Maven.

Current list of tasks

I wanted to reach out and introduce myself since I'll be looking into the current Selenium and Cypress tests in the main Dataverse repo. I will most definitely be asking for some direction on things like handling 2FA as I dig in! :smile:

@Philip Durbin 🚀 @Oliver Bertuch

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 24 2026 at 20:24):

@Ash Manda hi!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 24 2026 at 20:25):

Playwright? I thought we had standardized on Cypress. :thinking:

Ash Manda (Feb 24 2026 at 20:37):

Hi Philip. Thank you so much for replying. In our use case, we decided to go with Playwright in Java for a multitude of reasons that include some of the following:

Neither Selenium nor Cypress are backed by large enterprise organizations. In the long run, it makes sense to stick with a framework that has corporate backing like Playwright does with Microsoft. Because it is used extensively internally, we feel it would have a better chance of being maintained in the long run instead of jumping around with testing suites. Playwright also gets a lot wider support when it comes to browsers.
We have multiple Java developers employed here at RDMC, it makes more sense for us in the org side of things to ask a Java developer to maintain/update tests than ask them to work on a JavaScript testing suite
Since the main Dataverse repository is in Java, Playwright is very easily integrated into Java as say a maven profile. Since the new dataverse-frontend repo is in JavaScript and is using Playwright iirc, if we need to in the future, we can translate over these Playwright tests without a lot of friction.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 24 2026 at 21:08):

But the testing code should (eventually) be merged into the main repo, right? Should the maintainers of that repo have a say in which tool to use?

Don Sizemore (Feb 25 2026 at 13:44):

Philip Durbin 🚀 said:

But the testing code should (eventually) be merged into the main repo, right? Should the maintainers of that repo have a say in which tool to use?

absolutely, and yes we'd like to eventually merge what Ash produces. I just searched the IQSS org and Dataverse guides for cyprus but didn't find much on automated testing there. Is there a document outlining current automated testing plans with Cyprus, would y'all be willing to share that?

Oliver Bertuch (Feb 25 2026 at 14:02):

Isn't it "cypress" instead of "cyprus"?

Oliver Bertuch (Feb 25 2026 at 14:02):

At least that's what I see in https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend/blob/develop/cypress.config.ts

Don Sizemore (Feb 25 2026 at 14:28):

well, now that I can spell, I have more to go on :rofl: @Ash Manda let's take a look at https://github.com/IQSS/ondemand-loop/blob/6a7df45259fd97d58c9a87b445a8db8d2f99424d/docs/guide/content/development_guide/github_actions.md?plain=1#L10 ?

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 14:59):

Sorry, sorry, I was in a meeting.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:00):

Should we fire up zoom at talk a bit about automated testing?

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:00):

I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:01):

I'm very excited about more automated testing! And fresh ideas!

Don Sizemore (Feb 25 2026 at 15:03):

@Philip Durbin 🚀 Ash isn't here just yet today but yes I'd love to put the two of you in touch. We have a specific use case down here (21CFRPart11 validation) but by the time we work that out, we've done the bulk of the work for the greater repo/community.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:04):

Perfect! Thanks!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:07):

Don Sizemore said:

Is there a document outlining current automated testing plans with Cypress, would y'all be willing to share that?

Hmm, I think the closest might be the Dataverse - SPA Development Strategy doc, first shared here. There's a section on testing there that mentions Cypress.

@Ellen K might know more about why we chose Cypress over Playwright for the frontend. I remember talking about it but I can't find any notes.

Of course, for the backend we already use REST Assured for API testing. This is described here: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.9/developers/testing.html#writing-api-tests-with-rest-assured

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 15:08):

One of the things I'd like to understand is what we'd use Playwright for in the backend repo. Would we be testing the JSF code that we plan to throw away once we've switched to the SPA? :trash_can: :thinking:

Don Sizemore (Feb 25 2026 at 17:58):

@Philip Durbin 🚀 good afternoon! we're free until 3pm if you want me to scare up Ash for a Zoom?

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 18:20):

Hmm, I have a meeting in 10 minutes but we could talk quick if you want. Or maybe at 2pm?

Don Sizemore (Feb 25 2026 at 18:20):

2pm would be perfect!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 18:21):

Great, hopefully my 2FA is fixed by then :grimacing:

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 25 2026 at 19:50):

Thanks for chatting! See you at the frontend meeting tomorrow!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 26 2026 at 12:32):

I just added this topic to the agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ape8WJZjkjyypnHB88Ieodv7BSMJGVyZYlYwAdrZUM8/edit?usp=sharing (please feel free to request access).

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 26 2026 at 16:59):

@Don Sizemore @Ash Manda thanks for joining! This is what I wrote in the notes:

Decision: Write Cypress tests against JSF in the backend repo. Eventually, these tests will be moved to the frontend repo, once the SPA is ready.
What about logging in with 2FA in GitHub Actions? This might be a problem.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 26 2026 at 17:01):

I'll just add that I'd kindly request you to delete the old Cypress tests added in https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/pull/5922 as part of this effort. Sadly, we never got a chance to make proper use of them.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Feb 26 2026 at 17:02):

You might find inspiration from the Cypress tests at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse-frontend under the "tests" directory. And DEVELOPER_GUIDE.md talks about them.

Last updated: Apr 03 2026 at 06:08 UTC