Environment Flag for Cucumber Protractor E2E Tests? - json

Question

I have an existing Angular v5 app and have environment.json files for my environments (like DEV, Test, Production, etc.). The environments files are stored in the directory like so: src/Environments/DEV/environment.json.
Here is an example of a dev environment.json file:
{
"Comment": "Environment=DEV",
"API_ORIGIN": "https://myapp-dev",
"ORIGIN": "https://myapp-dev/index.html",
}
There is a root environment.json file in src folder that my app reads from. When I want to use a specific environment I just copy that environment content into the root and run the app.
Now with Cucumber and Protractor is there a way I can pass some command line argument to specify which environment.json file to use based on my setup? I have urls in these environment.json files so I need a way to tell Cucumber and Protractor which environment to use. If I have to copy all of the environment.json files into the e2e folder that is fine with me. Just in case the solution I need to use depends on the tools I am using here is my tsconfig.e2e.json file. Please let me know if it is incorrect:
{
"extends": "../tsconfig.json",
"compilerOptions": {
"outDir": "../out-tsc/e2e",
"baseUrl": "./",
"module": "commonjs",
"target": "es5",
"types": [
"chai",
"cucumber",
"node"
]
}
}
Here is the protractor.conf.js file. Let me know if it is incorrect as well please:
// Protractor configuration file, see link for more information
// https://github.com/angular/protractor/blob/master/lib/config.ts
exports.config = {
allScriptsTimeout: 11000,
specs: [
'./e2e/features/**/*.feature'
],
capabilities: {
'browserName': 'chrome'
},
directConnect: true,
baseUrl: 'http://localhost:4200/',
framework: 'custom',
frameworkPath: require.resolve('protractor-cucumber-framework'),
cucumberOpts: {
// require step definition files before executing features
require: ['./e2e/steps/**/*.ts'],
// <string[]> (expression) only execute the features or scenarios with tags matching the expression
tags: [],
// <string[]> ("extension:module") require files with the given EXTENSION after requiring MODULE (repeatable)
compiler: []
},
// Enable TypeScript for the tests
onPrepare() {
require('ts-node').register({
project: 'e2e/tsconfig.e2e.json'
});
}
};
I'm also using npm if that matters. I'm running these tests with ng e2e command provided by angular.

Answer 1

sure, 2 ways:
pass a parameter to protractor protractor conf.js --params.env="dev" and then refer to it as browser.params.env in specs. Downside is, it will only be available when the config is parsed and the browser is started, so you can really use that in the config itself
Run the process with an env variable MY_VAR=Dev protractor config.js and it will be available anywhere by running process.env.MY_VAR
For reference
https://stackoverflow.com/a/58547994/9150146
https://stackoverflow.com/a/66111592/9150146
P.S.
how you implement it is up to you, but this approach is the most flexible
conf.js
let environment = require('src/Environments/' + process.env.TEST_ENV + '/environment.json');
module.exports = {
baseUrl: environment.API_ORIGIN
}
and start your protractor like so
TEST_ENV=DEV protractor config.js