Cypress - Setting global variable from one test to use in other tests

Question

I am trying to set a variable that will contain a part of a URL (a UUID) which I would then like to use in separate test suites. This snippet of the URL will be different every time so I cannot set it in the cypress.json within the "env" options. Code is as follows -

  cy.location().then(fullUrl => {
    let pathName = fullUrl.pathname
    let arr = pathName.split('/');
    const teamsTeamID = arr[4]
    cy.log(teamsTeamID)
  })

I would then like to use teamsTeamID in a separate teardown test to delete the team at the end of every test run but the team ID will be different every time I run the test - Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use fixtures and then use readFile and writeFile to achieve this.

First create a json inside your fixtures folder urldata.json

{
  "uuid": "17289-YEHBE-893"
}

Then in your test you can write:

var teamsTeamID;

cy.location().then(fullUrl => {
  let pathName = fullUrl.pathname
  let arr = pathName.split('/');
  teamsTeamID = arr[4]
  cy.log(teamsTeamID)
})

cy.readFile("cypress/fixtures/urldata.json", (err, data) => {
  if (err) {
    return console.error(err);
  };
}).then((data) => {
  data.uuid = teamsTeamID
  cy.writeFile("cypress/fixtures/urldata.json", JSON.stringify(data))
})

So now every time you run the test, you will have different values of UUID in your json file. Next you can use the value from fixtures directly into other tests:

describe('Some page', () => {
  beforeEach(function () {
    // "this" points at the test context object
    cy.fixture('urldata.json').then((urldata) => {
      // "this" is still the test context object
      this.urldata = urldata
    })
  })

  // the test callback is in "function () { ... }" form
  it('check uuid', function () {
    // this.urldata exists
    expect(this.urldata.uuid).to.equal('some uuid')
  })
})

Point to be noted:

If you store and access the fixture data using this test context object, make sure to use function () { ... } callbacks. Otherwise the test engine will NOT have this pointing at the test context.