Using Parcel as a dev server

[JessicaSachs]

Discussed in #16977

^{Originally posted by mscoobby June 17, 2021}
Hello everyone,
We've started using Cypress for testing our React based application and it works great but we are using Parcel to bundle the application and it would be nice if we don't have to introduce webpack to the project. I've looked around and tried different things but could not manage to make Cypress component testing work without webpack. I would appreciate any information on the topic.

[JessicaSachs]

Cross-posting my own response.

Hey!

We actually have support for Vite (+ rollup) and I'd love to get support for Parcel.

Can you send me a repository with your normal development flow? I don't know how folks usually develop Parcel apps.

For component testing, we just need some sort of a dev server. Even something like a static express #server would work just fine.

Essentially, Cypress treats each spec as a standalone "page", so we need to have a harness that respects that contract and correctly returns a "compiled" file where your spec is essentially a main.js file.

In Webpack, that's particularly difficult because we need to support a lot of Webpack's proprietary bundling features... However, but for different bundlers, it's generally pretty easy to get it working.

Anyway, shoot me over an example repo and I'll take a look 👍🏻.

[khill-fbmc]

I would be willing to help test this since I want to learn cypress and currently use Parcel.

[bvandercar-vt]

seconding this request, much needed

[isitgeorge]

+1

[pedily]

+1

[doelgonzo]

+1

[daviesgeek]

+1, the docs are lacking in this area

[jkliptonia]

This is very much needed, Parcel is common. Is there any workaround besides introducing webpack?

[lmiller1990]

Agreed docs are lacking: https://cypress-documentation-8cl0tm1rj-cypress-io.vercel.app/guides/component-testing/component-framework-configuration#Custom-Dev-Server

This is almost certainly possible right now, let's work on it. First step is look at ^^^^^ docs and try pointing it at your Parcel dev server and see if you can get something rendering in Cypress Component Testing.

Once that is working, I can writeup what else is needed - basically we just need to respond with the right events. Vite dev server is probably the most "simple" example of a dev server here. The events are things like this, eg dev-server:specs:changed. Parcel most likely has a hook for this, we'd just listen to it and emit the event to tell Cypress to re-run etc.

Anyone have Parcel dev experience who'd like to work on this with me?

[lmiller1990]

I tried a bit: https://github.com/lmiller1990/parcel-cypress-plugin

I got stuck on

Cypress is asking for localhost:1234/src/App.cy.jsx to which Parcel doesn't respond. Anyone know how I can add an extra file based on a path to Parcel's dev server? I tried the outputFS but I could not get it working.

Also, any way to customize the HTML Parcel's Dev Server uses? In Vite we can do transformIndexHtml https://vitejs.dev/guide/api-plugin.html#transformindexhtml

[daviesgeek]

@lmiller1990 i wonder if creating a custom target will make this work ok. How does Cypress interact with the dev server? When it's asking for src/App.cy.jsx, what is it expecting back?

[lmiller1990]

Hmm good question - it's an index.html with this embedded in a <script> tag:

cypress/npm/vite-dev-server/client/initCypressTests.js

Lines 43 to 47 in 1c5a67f

	importsToLoad.push({
	load: () => import(testFileAbsolutePathRoute),
	absolute: CypressInstance.spec.absolute,
	relative: CypressInstance.spec.relative,
	relativeUrl: testFileAbsolutePathRoute,

It's a JS blob that imports the correct spec, and some runtime code to execute the test (fairly Cypress specific, but I can handle this - once we figure out how to tell Parcel what to serve for a given URL).

[daviesgeek]

@lmiller1990 do you think it'd be sufficient to write a small script that handles taking the path sent by Cypress to send the right response back? I don't have a good picture of the entirety of what's needed to make this work, but would a solution like that be sufficient? Parcel already rewrites requests, so it'd just be a matter of writing the proper script to handle the request.

[lmiller1990]

@daviesgeek I think so - as long as the correct index.html is served with the right <script> injected (that loads the spec from Parcel dev-server, whatever that route turns out to be) Cypress should handle the rest.

I'm not sure I have time to work on it now, but I can definitely review/look at code if you'd like to take a look at it.

[daviesgeek]

@lmiller1990 i can see what i can do; how did you get to the point of the above where cypress is actually attempting to load the parcel dev server up? It's been a little bit , but last time I tried, i don't think i got that far

[lmiller1990]

Been a while for me but all the code I wrote should be in this repo: https://github.com/lmiller1990/parcel-cypress-plugin/

The bulk of the dev server stuff would go in https://github.com/lmiller1990/parcel-cypress-plugin/blob/main/cypress.config.js

If you need help navigating the Cypress code base, lmk, but theoretically this should all be do-able from outside - our webpack and vite dev servers are completely separate from the main code base, too.

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cypress/vite-dev-server/v/2.2.1
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cypress/webpack-dev-server

The code lives in this repo https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/tree/develop/npm but they are developed and deployed in isolation. If you can get the routing to work and serve the correct spec, I can wire up all the hot reload events and that kind of thing.

[lmiller1990]

If anyone wants to work on this, good example of how to build a dev server: https://github.com/fochlac/cypress-devserver-esbuild/tree/main

[lorenzogrv]

Hi there. I'm currently setting up a project which will accomplish this.

The most tricky part is fiddling around with the NODE_OPTIONS - specifically --openssl-legacy-provider - which isn't compatible with parcel workers. Electron has some docs about it, but I'm still determining how our dev and CI environments affect this setting.

[lorenzogrv]

I finally reached a working setup. Few things:

• To workaround the --openssl-legacy-provider quirk, I'm using an spawned child_process to hold the parcel bundler within, which communicates with cypress' node process via the usual IPC channel means.
• While I'm still researching how to "inject" the extra logic need on the parcel dev server, I'm using an express app to proxy/adapt the requests coming from cypress
• I've researched vite's dev-server cypress adapter source for real code to inject the actual tests on the client side
• The devServerEvents parameter lacks a proper documentation. It does not even detect changes on the specs

I'm still researching and evolving the solution

[lmiller1990]

There was some minor updates to our docs recently: https://docs.cypress.io/guides/component-testing/component-framework-configuration#Custom-Dev-Server

devServerEvents definitely needs better docs. Our implementation should have some types (I think?) so if you look at vite-dev-server that should give you some hints.

I can take a look if you are really stuck, just share your GH repo.

[lorenzogrv]

I would like to share but the setup is still experimental and currently versioned within a private monorepo at gitlab.com.

As said, "it works". Quotes because I still need to figure out how to properly detect and trigger re-runs when specs - or the code they depend upon - change. It's sub-optimal having to refresh manually, ofc 😅 . It would be awesome if you can point me to some places at vite-dev-server source where the relevant devServerEvents are handled/emitted, I could research way quicker. A link or two would suffice, I can understand and follow the code but digging through the complexity of the cypress monorepo takes time.

I expect to extract the relevant source from the private monorepo and publish on a near future, so people looking for a pattern to integrate with parcel can benefit. Thanks for feedback

[lmiller1990]

Sure, you should have access to devServerEvents when you create a dev server. It is passed in from the cypress.config.js, eg:

export default defineConfig({
  component: {
    async devServer({ specs, cypressConfig, devServerEvents }: DevServerOptions) {
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ here it is, it's an event emitter, emit things
      const { port, close } = await startDevServer(
        specs,
        cypressConfig,
        devServerEvents
      )

      return {
        port,
        close,
      }
    },
  },
})

You can then do something like this:

cypress/npm/webpack-dev-server/src/CypressCTWebpackPlugin.ts

Line 157 in 236b181

this.devServerEvents.emit('dev-server:compile:success')

this.devServerEvents.emit('dev-server:compile:success')

Search for devServerEvents in this directory and you can find them all. They go through a bunch of plumbing and end up getting responded to here which is in the browser - in this case, you can see 'dev-server:compile:success' leads to a function that calls rerun().

Just ask if you have more questions, I haven't worked on the dev servers in quite some time so I will also need to do a refresher. If you can make your code public, I could take a look.

[llyzanezky]

It has been over a year since the last comment, so has there been any progress towards moving this into the baseline? We could certainly use the parcel dev server.

[lmiller1990]

I don't think anyone is working on this.