synthetics

This page is about configuring Continuous Testing tests for your Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) pipelines. If you want to bring your CI/CD metrics and data into Datadog dashboards, see the CI Visibility section.

Overview

Use the @datadog-ci NPM package to run Continuous Testing tests directly within your CI/CD pipeline. You can automatically halt a build, block a deployment, and roll back a deployment when a Synthetic browser test detects a regression.

To configure which URL your test starts on, provide a startUrl to your test object. Build your own starting URL with any part of your test's original starting URL and include environment variables.

Setup

Install the package

Install the package through NPM:

npm install --save-dev @datadog/datadog-ci

Install the package through Yarn:

yarn add --dev @datadog/datadog-ci

Setup the client

To setup the client, your Datadog API and application keys need to be configured. These keys can be defined in three different ways:

1. Defined as environment variables:

   export DATADOG_API_KEY="<API_KEY>"
   export DATADOG_APP_KEY="<APPLICATION_KEY>"

2. Passed to the CLI when running your tests:

   yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests --apiKey "<API_KEY>" --appKey "<APPLICATION_KEY>"

3. Or defined in a global JSON configuration file:

   Create a JSON configuration file on your system. Specify the path to the file using the --config flag when launching your tests. If you don't specify a file path, Datadog uses the default filename of datadog-ci.json.

Global configuration file options

When you run your tests, use the --config flag on the command line to specify the path to the global configuration file.

See below for the list of advanced options in the global configuration file. For an example configuration file, see this global.config.json file.

apiKey : The API key used to query the Datadog API.

appKey : The application key used to query the Datadog API.

datadogSite : The Datadog instance to which request is sent. The default is datadoghq.com.

failOnCriticalErrors : A boolean flag that fails the CI job if no tests were triggered, or results could not be fetched from Datadog. The default is set to false.

failOnMissingTests : A boolean flag that fails the CI job if at least one specified test with a public ID (a --public-id CLI argument or listed in a test file) is missing in a run (for example, if it has been deleted programmatically or on the Datadog site). The default is set to false.

failOnTimeout : A boolean flag that fails the CI job if at least one test exceeds the default test timeout. The default is set to true.

files : Glob patterns to detect Synthetic test configuration files.

defaultTestOverrides : Overrides for Synthetic tests applied to all tests.

mobileApplicationVersionFilePath : Override the application version for all Synthetic mobile application tests.

pollingTimeout : Type: integer
The duration (in milliseconds) after which datadog-ci stops polling for test results. The default is 30 minutes. At the CI level, test results completed after this duration are considered failed.

proxy : The proxy to be used for outgoing connections to Datadog. host and port keys are mandatory arguments, the protocol key defaults to http. Supported values for the protocol key are http, https, socks, socks4, socks4a, socks5, socks5h, pac+data, pac+file, pac+ftp, pac+http, and pac+https. The library used to configure the proxy is the proxy-agent library.

selectiveRerun : A boolean flag to only run the tests which failed in the previous test batches. Use the --no-selectiveRerun CLI flag to force a full run if your configuration enables it by default.

subdomain : The name of the custom subdomain set to access your Datadog application. If the URL used to access Datadog is myorg.datadoghq.com, the subdomain value needs to be set to myorg.

testSearchQuery : Pass a query to select which Synthetic tests to run. If you are running tests in the CLI, use the -s flag.

tunnel : Use the Continuous Testing Tunnel to execute your test batch.

Use a proxy

It is possible to configure a proxy to be used for outgoing connections to Datadog using the proxy key of the global configuration file.

As the proxy-agent library is used to configure the proxy, the supported protocols include http, https, socks, socks4, socks4a, socks5, socks5h, pac+data, pac+file, pac+ftp, pac+http, and pac+https. The proxy key of the global configuration file is passed to a new proxy-agent instance, which means the same configuration for the library is supported.

Note: host and port keys are mandatory arguments and the protocol key defaults to http if not defined.

For example:

{
  "apiKey": "<DATADOG_API_KEY>",
  "appKey": "<DATADOG_APPLICATION_KEY>",
  "datadogSite": "datadoghq.com", // You can use another Datadog site in https://docs.datadoghq.com/getting_started/site/. By default, requests are sent to Datadog US1.
  "failOnCriticalErrors": false,
  "failOnMissingTests": false,
  "failOnTimeout": true,
  "files": ["{,!(node_modules)/**/}*.synthetics.json"],
  "defaultTestOverrides": {
    "allowInsecureCertificates": true,
    "basicAuth": {"username": "test", "password": "test"},
    "body": "{\"fakeContent\":true}",
    "bodyType": "application/json",
    "cookies": "name1=value1;name2=value2;",
    "deviceIds": ["laptop_large"],
    "followRedirects": true,
    "headers": {"<NEW_HEADER>": "<NEW_VALUE>"},
    "locations": ["aws:us-west-1"],
    "mobileApplicationVersion": "01234567-8888-9999-abcd-efffffffffff",
    "mobileApplicationVersionFilePath": "path/to/application.apk",
    "retry": {"count": 2, "interval": 300},
    "executionRule": "blocking",
    "startUrlSubstitutionRegex": "s/(https://www.)(.*)/$1extra-$2/",
    "startUrl": "{{URL}}?static_hash={{STATIC_HASH}}",
    "variables": {"titleVariable": "new value"},
    "pollingTimeout": 180000
  },
  "proxy": {
    "auth": {
      "username": "login",
      "password": "pwd"
    },
    "host": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": 3128,
    "protocol": "http"
  },
  "subdomain": "subdomainname",
  "tunnel": true
}

Note: The global field from the global configuration file is deprecated in favor of defaultTestOverrides.

Command line options

If the organization uses a custom sub-domain to access Datadog, this needs to be set in the DATADOG_SUBDOMAIN environment variable or in the global configuration file under the subdomain key in order to properly display the test results URL.

For example, if the URL used to access Datadog is myorg.datadoghq.com, set the environment variable to myorg:

export DATADOG_SUBDOMAIN="myorg"

You can use DATADOG_SYNTHETICS_LOCATIONS to override the locations where your tests run. Locations should be separated with ;. The configuration in test files takes precedence over other overrides.

export DATADOG_SYNTHETICS_LOCATIONS="aws:us-east-1;aws:us-east-2"

API

By default, datadog-ci runs at the root of the working directory and finds {,!(node_modules)/**/}*.synthetics.json files (every file ending with .synthetics.json, except for those in the node_modules folder). The tool loads datadog-ci.json, which can be overridden through the --config argument.

For example:

{
  "apiKey": "<DATADOG_API_KEY>",
  "appKey": "<DATADOG_APPLICATION_KEY>",
  "datadogSite": "datadoghq.com", // You can use another Datadog site in https://docs.datadoghq.com/getting_started/site/. By default, requests are sent to Datadog US1. 
  "failOnCriticalErrors": true,
  "failOnMissingTests": true,
  "failOnTimeout": true,
  "files": ["{,!(node_modules)/**/}*.synthetics.json"],
  "defaultTestOverrides": {
    "allowInsecureCertificates": true,
    "basicAuth": {"username": "test", "password": "test"},
    "body": "{\"fakeContent\":true}",
    "bodyType": "application/json",
    "cookies": "name1=value1;name2=value2;",
    "defaultStepTimeout": 15,
    "deviceIds": ["chrome.laptop_large"],
    "executionRule": "skipped",
    "followRedirects": true,
    "headers": {"NEW_HEADER": "NEW VALUE"},
    "locations": ["aws:us-east-1"],
    "mobileApplicationVersion": "01234567-8888-9999-abcd-efffffffffff",
    "mobileApplicationVersionFilePath": "path/to/application.apk",
    "pollingTimeout": 120000,
    "retry": {"count": 2, "interval": 300},
    "startUrl": "{{URL}}?static_hash={{STATIC_HASH}}",
    "startUrlSubstitutionRegex": "s/(https://www.)(.*)/$1extra-$2/",
    "testTimeout": 300,
    "variables": {"NEW_VARIABLE": "NEW VARIABLE"}
  },
  "proxy": {
    "auth": {
      "username": "login",
      "password": "pwd"
    },
    "host": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": 3128,
    "protocol": "http"
  },
  "subdomain": "subdomainname",
  "tunnel": true
}

Note: The global field from the global configuration file is deprecated in favor of defaultTestOverrides.

Run tests

You can decide to have the CLI auto-discover all your **/*.synthetics.json Synthetic tests (or all the tests associated to the path specified in your global configuration file) or specify the tests you want to run using the -p,--public-id flag.

Run tests by executing the CLI through NPM:

Add the following to your package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "datadog-ci-synthetics": "datadog-ci synthetics run-tests"
  }
}

Then, run:

npm run datadog-ci-synthetics

Note: If you are launching your tests with a custom global configuration file, append the command associated to your datadog-ci-synthetics script with --config <PATH_TO_GLOBAL_CONFIG_FILE>.

Run tests by executing the CLI through Yarn:

The run-tests sub-command runs the tests discovered in the folder according to the files configuration key. It accepts the --public-id (or shorthand -p) argument to trigger only the specified test. It can be set multiple times to run multiple tests:

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests --public-id pub-lic-id1 --public-id pub-lic-id2

It is also possible to trigger tests corresponding to a search query by using the flag --search (or shorthand -s). With this option, the overrides defined in your global configuration file apply to all tests discovered with the search query.

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests -s 'tag:e2e-tests'

You can use --files (shorthand -f) to override the default glob pattern (which would match all **/*.synthetics.json files) when you want to discover only a subset of the tests.

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests -f ./component-1/**/*.synthetics.json -f ./component-2/**/*.synthetics.json

You can also pass variables as arguments using --variable KEY=VALUE.

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests -f ./component-1/**/*.synthetics.json -v PASSWORD=$PASSWORD

Note: If you are launching your tests with a custom global configuration file, append your command with --config <PATH_TO_GLOBAL_CONFIG_FILE>.

Failure modes flags

• --failOnTimeout (or --no-failOnTimeout) makes the CI fail (or pass) if one of the results exceeds its test timeout.
• --failOnCriticalErrors makes the CI fail if tests were not triggered or if results could not be fetched.
• --failOnMissingTests makes the CI fail if at least one specified test with a public ID (a --public-id CLI argument or listed in a test file) is missing in a run (for example, if it has been deleted programmatically or on the Datadog site).

Test files

Your test files must be named with a .synthetics.json suffix.

// myTest.synthetics.json
{
  "tests": [
    {
      "id": "<TEST_PUBLIC_ID>",
      "config": {
        "allowInsecureCertificates": true,
        "basicAuth": {"username": "test", "password": "test"},
        "body": "{\"fakeContent\":true}",
        "bodyType": "application/json",
        "cookies": "name1=value1;name2=value2;",
        "defaultStepTimeout": 15,
        "deviceIds": ["chrome.laptop_large"],
        "executionRule": "skipped",
        "followRedirects": true,
        "headers": {"NEW_HEADER": "NEW VALUE"},
        "locations": ["aws:us-east-1"],
        "mobileApplicationVersion": "01234567-8888-9999-abcd-efffffffffff",
        "mobileApplicationVersionFilePath": "path/to/application.apk",
        "pollingTimeout": 30000,
        "retry": {"count": 2, "interval": 300},
        "startUrl": "{{URL}}?static_hash={{STATIC_HASH}}",
        "startUrlSubstitutionRegex": "s/(https://www.)(.*)/$1extra-$2/",
        "testTimeout": 300,
        "variables": {"MY_VARIABLE": "new title"}
      }
    }
  ]
}

The <TEST_PUBLIC_ID> can be either the identifier of the test found in the URL of a test details page (for example, for https://app.datadoghq.com/synthetics/details/abc-def-ghi, it would be abc-def-ghi) or the full URL to the details page (for example, directly https://app.datadoghq.com/synthetics/details/abc-def-ghi).

All options under the config key are optional and allow overriding of the test configuration as stored in Datadog.

Options	Type	Definition
allowInsecureCertificates	Boolean	Disable certificate checks in Synthetic API and Browser tests.
basicAuth	Object	Credentials to provide if basic authentication is required. - username (String): The username for basic authentication. - password (String): The password for basic authentication.
body	String	Data to send in an API test.
bodyType	String	Content type for the data to send in an API test.
cookies	String or object	Use the provided string as a cookie header in an API or browser test (in addition or as a replacement). - If this is a string, it is used to replace the original cookies. - If this is an object, the format must be {append?: boolean, value: string}, and depending on the value of append, it is appended or replaces the original cookies.
defaultStepTimeout	Number	The maximum duration of steps in seconds for browser tests, which does not override individually set step timeouts.
deviceIds	Array	A list of devices to run the browser test on.
executionRule	String	The execution rule for the test defines the behavior of the CLI in case of a failing test. - blocking: The CLI returns an error if the test fails. - non_blocking: The CLI only prints a warning if the test fails. - skipped: The test is not executed at all.
followRedirects	Boolean	Indicates whether or not to follow HTTP redirections in Synthetic API tests.
headers	Object	The headers to replace in the test. This object should contain keys as the name of the header to replace and values as the new value of the header to replace.
locations	Array	A list of locations to run the test from.
mobileApplicationVersion	String	Override the default mobile application version for a Synthetic mobile application test. The version must be uploaded and available within Datadog.
mobileApplicationVersionFilePath	String	Override the application version for a Synthetic mobile application test.
pollingTimeout	Integer	The maximum duration in milliseconds of a test. If the execution exceeds this value, it is considered failed. The maximum duration is 7,200,000 milliseconds, or 2 hours.
retry	Object	The retry policy for the test. - count (Integer): The number of attempts to perform in case of test failure. - interval (Integer): The interval between attempts in milliseconds.
startUrl	String	The new start URL to provide to the test. Variables specified in brackets (for example, {{ EXAMPLE }}) found in environment variables are replaced.
startUrlSubstitutionRegex	String	The regex to modify the starting URL of the test (for browser and HTTP tests only), whether it was given by the original test or the configuration override startUrl. If the URL contains variables, this regex applies after the interpolation of the variables. There are two possible formats: - your_regex|your_substitution: The pipe-based syntax, to avoid any conflicts with / characters in URLs. For example, https://example.com(.*)|http://subdomain.example.com$1 to transform https://example.com/test to http://subdomain.example.com/test. - s/your_regex/your_substitution/modifiers: The slash syntax, which supports modifiers. For example, s/(https://www.)(.*)/$1extra-$2/ to transform https://www.example.com into https://www.extra-example.com.
testTimeout	Number	The maximum duration of a browser test in seconds.
variables	Object	The variables to replace in the test. This object should contain key as the name of the variable to replace and values as the new value of the variable to replace.

Use the testing tunnel

You can combine variable overrides with the Continuous Testing Tunnel to run tests within your development environment. The testing tunnel creates an end-to-end encrypted HTTP proxy between your infrastructure and Datadog that allows all test requests sent through the CLI to be automatically routed through the datadog-ci client.

This allows you to run tests with end-to-end encryption at every stage of your software development lifecycle, from pre-production environments to your production system.

End-to-end testing process

To verify the Synthetics command works as expected, trigger a test run and verify it returns 0:

export DATADOG_API_KEY='<API_KEY>'
export DATADOG_APP_KEY='<APPLICATION_KEY>'

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests --public-id abc-def-ghi

Successful output should look like this:

[abc-def-ghi] Trigger test "Check on testing.website"
[abc-def-ghi] Waiting results for "Check on testing.website"


=== REPORT ===
Took 11546ms

✓ [abc-def-ghi] | Check on testing.website
  ✓ location: Frankfurt (AWS)
    ⎋  total duration: 28.9 ms - result url: https://app.datadoghq.com/synthetics/details/abc-def-ghi?resultId=123456789123456789
    ✓ GET - https://testing.website

Reporters

Two reporters are supported out-of-the-box:

1. stdout
2. JUnit

To enable the JUnit report, pass the --jUnitReport (-j shorthand) in your command, specifying a filename for your JUnit XML report.

yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests -s 'tag:e2e-tests' --config global.config.json --jUnitReport e2e-test-junit

Reporters can hook themselves into the MainReporter of the command.

Available hooks

Hook name	Parameters	Description
log	(log: string)	Called for logging.
error	(error: string)	Called whenever an error occurs.
initErrors	(errors: string[])	Called whenever an error occurs during the tests parsing phase.
testTrigger	(test: Test, testId: string, executionRule: ExecutionRule, config: UserConfigOverride)	Called when a test is triggered.
testWait	(test: Test)	Called when a test is waiting to receive its results.
testsWait	(tests: Test[], baseUrl: string, batchId: string, skippedCount?: number)	Called when all tests are waiting to receive their results.
resultReceived	(result: ResultInBatch)	Called when a result is received.
resultEnd	(result: Result, baseUrl: string)	Called for each result at the end of all results.
reportStart	(timings: {startTime: number})	Called at the start of the report.
runEnd	(summary: Summary, baseUrl: string, orgSettings?: SyntheticsOrgSettings)	Called at the end of the run.

View test results

You can see results for CI batches by clicking on a batch in the Synthetic Monitoring & Testing Results Explorer or clicking on a test on the Tests page.

You can also see the outcome of test executions directly in your CI as your tests are being executed. To identify what caused a test to fail, look at the execution logs and search for causes of the failed assertion.

  yarn datadog-ci synthetics run-tests --config synthetics.global.json
  yarn run v1.22.4
  $ /Users/demo.user/go/src/github.com/Datadog/tmp/test/testDemo/node_modules/.bin/datadog-ci synthetics run-tests --config synthetics.global.json
  Finding files matching /Users/demo.user/go/src/github.com/Datadog/tmp/test/testDemo/{,!(node_modules)/**/}*.synthetics.json

  Got test files:
    - user.synthetics.json

  [2cj-h3c-39x] Trigger test "Test CI connection"
  [2cj-h3c-39x] Waiting results for "Test CI connection"

  === REPORT ===
  Took 2242ms

  x  [2cj-h3c-39x] | Test CI connection
    * location: 30019
      ⎋ total duration: 32.6 ms - result url: https://app.datadoghq.com/synthetics/details/2cj-h3c-39x?resultId=122140688175981634
      x GET - https://www.datadoghq.com
        [INCORRECT_ASSUMPTION] - [{"index":1,"operator":"is","property":"content-type","type":"header","target":"text/html","valid":false,"actual":"text/html"; charset=utf-8"}] 
  error Command failed with exit code 1.
  info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.

Upload Application Command

This command uploads a new version to an existing mobile application.

Command line options

--mobileApplicationId : The ID of the application you want to upload the new version to.

--mobileApplicationVersionFilePath : The path to your mobile application (.apk or .ipa).

--versionName : The name of the new version. It has to be unique.

--latest : If present, marks the application as 'latest'. Any tests that run on the latest version will use this version on their next run.

Example:

datadog-ci synthetics upload-application                \
  --mobileApplicationId '123-123-123'                   \
  --mobileApplicationVersionFilePath example/test.apk   \
  --versionName 'example 1.0'                           \
  --latest

Using the global configuration file

You can also pass these options in a configuration file:

{
  "apiKey": "<DATADOG_API_KEY>",
  "appKey": "<DATADOG_APPLICATION_KEY>",
  "mobileApplicationVersionFilePath": "example_path/example_app.apk",
  "mobileApplicationId": "example-abc",
  "versionName": "example",
  "latest": true
}

And pass it to the command with the --config flag:

datadog-ci synthetics upload-application --config global.config.json

Further reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

• Use Datadog's GitHub Action to add continuous testing to your workflows
• Learn about Continuous Testing and CI/CD
• Learn about Mobile Application Testing
• Learn about the Synthetic Monitoring & Testing Results Explorer
• Learn about Testing Local and Staging Environments