Running Protractor tests on Browserstack Automate

Question

I'm developing an AngularJS app and want to do end-2-end testing with Protractor. I would like to benefit from the suite of test browsers available at Browserstack and run the tests on Browserstack Automate instead of a local Selenium server.

How do I set up a system to run these tests?

Answer 1

Protractor from version 3.0.0 onwards has added inbuilt support for BrowserStack.

You simply need to add the following two parameters in your conf.js to launch the test on BrowserStack:

browserstackUser: '<username>'
browserstackKey: '<automate-key>'

Your username and automate key can be found here, after you have logged in to your account.

Hence, lets say you wish to run your test on Chrome 50 / OS X Yosemite, your conf.js should look something like this:

exports.config = {
  specs: ['spec.js'],

  browserstackUser: '<username>',
  browserstackKey: '<automate-key>',

  capabilities: {
    browserName: 'Chrome',
    browser_version: '50.0',
    os: 'OS X',
    os_version: 'Yosemite'
  },    
};

If you wish to run tests in parallel on different browser and OS combinations, you can use the multiCapabilities as given below:

exports.config = {
  specs: ['spec.js'],

  browserstackUser: '<username>',
  browserstackKey: '<automate-key>',

  multiCapabilities: [
    {
        browserName: 'Safari',
        browser_version: '8.0',
        os: 'OS X',
        os_version: 'Yosemite'
    },
    {
       browserName: 'Firefox',
       browser_version: '30.0',
       os: 'Windows',
       os_version: '7'
    },
    {
       browserName: 'iPhone',
       platform: 'MAC',
       device: 'iPhone 5S'
    }
  ]
};

Some helpful links:

1. Code Generator - Helps you configure the capabilities to test on different various browser and OS combinations especially mobile devices.

2. Sample Github project for Protractor-BrowserStack - This should help you get started.