passing username / password dynamically (CLI or other workaround)

[michahell]

We are testing an add-in (plugin if you will) that is running inside another webapp (Outlook Web Access).
To authenticate, we either use our own account (when developing) or specific test accounts (QA's / automated testing).

However, we wish to nót hardcode the account details (so not hardcoded inside an exported module and not using a DataTable, etc.) but pass them via the command line.
For example, using protractor, something like this is quite trivial, as you can just create a config object that contains the fields username and password and overwrite these with separate flags using the CLI.

It seems this is a lot harder to achieve in Codecept. I know of the --profile switch, but it seems like a hassle to make that work for multiple fields (like username + password).
Another approach I tried was to set process environment variables befóre running tests witha simple node script that prompts for username and password if these are not set.
However, I can not retrieve these inside my tests:

excerpt from e2e-credentials.js:

process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_USER = username;
process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_PASS = password;

package.json script:
"test:e2e:verbose": "node tools/e2e-credentials.js && codeceptjs run --steps --debug --verbose",

`CodeceptJs test:

loginToOwaPage.login(process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_USER, process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_PASS);

But this does not work, probably because these are not the same processes?

What would be the best way to achieve such a thing in CodeceptJs ?

[kobenguyent]

why do you put creds file in different place? is it not possible to have it inside codeceptjs folder?

[michahell]

The point is that we don't want to: sometimes account passwords change, or you want to be able to test with your own account, which you don't want to store anywhere etc.

[michahell]

So right now, my solution is a (git) ignored credentials.js file, but I find this a workaround and not a solution.

[kobenguyent]

is it possible that you have a default account? let's say if you provide

process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_USER = username;
process.env.OWA_CODECEPT_PASS = password;

this will be used instead of default account.

[michahell]

This is also what I tried, but could not get to work: I think that the actual tests used inside codeceptjs don't have access to process.env... I'll try this again without a script that prompts for it but just exporting it before running the codecept command

[xMutaGenx]

Why not simply pass them into the node as env variables, simply prepend them before your run command USERNAME=username PASSWORD=password ./node_modules/.bin/codeceptjs run .... then you simply access them inside your framework via:

const username = process.env.USERNAME;
const password = process.env.PASSWORD;

[gabrielcaires]

You can use .env file with this package https://www.npmjs.com/package/env-cmd.
So, you will just need to update your package.json to use something like:
env-cmd .env.test codeceptjs run

[austinmehmet]

We had to do something similar because we needed to pass in dynamic environments generated by our CI and run against a proxy username/password. This is all done through the CLI and we have different scripts that run locally vs in our CI/CD all with different credentials.

codecept.conf.js

const config = {
  // your config
}

// check if you have env variables
if (process.env.npm_config_proxyusername !== undefined && process.env.npm_config_proxypassword !== undefined) {
  // set the username/password into a custom helper
  config.helpers.LaunchHelper.username = process.env.npm_config_proxyusername
  config.helpers.LaunchHelper.password = process.env.npm_config_proxypassword
}

custom LaunchHelper

class LaunchHelper extends Helper {
  async launchApplication() {
    const I = actor()

    I.amOnPage('/')
    if (this.config.username && this.config.password) {
      const puppeteer = this.helpers.Puppeteer
      const page = await puppeteer.page
      await page.authenticate({ username: this.config.username, password: this.config.password })
    }
  }
}

module.exports = LaunchHelper

example script

npm run e2e:headless --url="$CI_ENVIRONMENT_URL" --proxyusername="$proxy_username" --proxypassword="$proxy_password"