Wheels 4.0 testing — Playwright Java, HTTP test client, parallel runner, zero-Docker inner loop

[bpamiri]

Testing got a major upgrade in 4.0. The list:

1. Browser testing (Playwright Java)

#2113, #2115, #2116, #2121, #2122 — new BrowserTest base class drives a real Chromium through a fluent DSL wrapping Playwright Java.

component extends="wheels.wheelstest.BrowserTest" {
    function run() {
        browserDescribe("Login flow", () => {
            it("logs in and lands on dashboard", () => {
                if (this.browserTestSkipped) return;
                this.browser
                    .visit("/login")
                    .fill("##email", "a@example.com")
                    .fill("##password", "secret")
                    .click("button[type=submit]")
                    .assertUrlContains("/dashboard")
                    .assertSee("Welcome");
            });
        });
    }
}

DSL surface: navigation, interaction, keyboard, waiting, scoping (within), cookies, auth (loginAs / logout), dialogs, viewport (resizeToMobile / resizeToTablet / resizeToDesktop), arbitrary script evaluation, screenshots, and a full assertion suite (text, visibility, URL, title, query string, form values).

Install: wheels browser setup (~370MB — Playwright JARs + Chromium). CI installs and runs browser specs automatically; specs gracefully skip when JARs are missing so local runs without Playwright stay green.

2. HTTP test client

#2099 — fluent integration testing without a browser:

TestClient
    .visit("/api/users")
    .assertOk()
    .assertJsonPath("data.0.name", "Alice")
    .assertHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");

TestClient
    .followRedirects(false)
    .post("/login", {email: "...", password: "..."})
    .assertRedirect("/dashboard");

Full assertion set: status (assertOk, assertStatus), body (assertSee, assertDontSee, assertSeeInOrder), JSON (assertJson, assertJsonPath with dot notation), redirects, headers, cookies. Cookies are tracked across requests for session tests.

3. Parallel test runner

#2100 — partition test bundles across workers, aggregate results:

• Discovers bundles in the target directory.
• Partitions across N workers via round-robin.
• Fires parallel HTTP requests through cfthread.
• Aggregates JSON results into a single report.
• Configurable worker count and timeout.

4. Zero-Docker inner loop

bash tools/test-local.sh runs the full core test suite on LuCLI + SQLite in ~60s. The CI pipeline runs the same stack (#2032), so "passes locally" and "passes CI" are the same claim.

bash tools/test-local.sh              # all core tests
bash tools/test-local.sh model        # model tests only
bash tools/test-local.sh security     # security tests only
bash tools/test-local.sh controller   # controller tests only

Cross-engine validation (Adobe CF, BoxLang, MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server, CockroachDB) is still available via Docker for pre-merge. Engine-grouped testing (#1939) cut the matrix from 42 jobs to 8.

5. BDD-only posture

• testbox → wheelstest namespace rename (#1889) — new tests extend wheels.WheelsTest.
• Legacy RocketUnit removed from core (#1925) — existing RocketUnit specs continue to work; no new ones.
• tests/specs/functions/ → tests/specs/functional/ (#1872).

Links

• Browser testing reference
• Full audit §12 — Testing infrastructure

Question for the thread

Browser testing is new-for-CFML territory. If you've adopted Playwright / Capybara / Dusk in another stack, what's the single feature from that toolkit that would most make you trust BrowserTest for the hairier specs? Good input for 4.0.x point releases.

Read the full post: https://blog.wheels.dev/posts/testing-in-wheels-4/