Performance Tests

:test_tube: This is currently experimental.

Overview

These tests are implemented using:

  • Playwright for testing and automation.
  • Lighthouse for auditing, metrics and best practice recommendations.

Setup

Tip: To avoid browser & driver problems, use an OS with a graphical user interface (even if you intend to run the performance tests in headless mode).

Install dependencies

The performance testing dependencies are larger than for the core project so they are included under optional dependencies.

npm install --include=optional

Install a browser for Playwright to use (& all its dependencies):

npx playwright install --with-deps
Dependency troubleshooting. Playwright can also install its dependencies using: 
npx playwright install-deps
Or, failing that, using `apt-get` if using Ubuntu: 
sudo apt-get install libevent-2.1-7t64 libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 libflite1 libavif16 gstreamer1.0-libav

Set environment variables

In the project root, copy & rename ./.env.example to .env & fill it in with your OpenStack credentials.

OS_AUTH_URL=
OS_DOMAIN=
OS_USERNAME=
OS_PASSWORD=
OS_PROJECT=
OS_REGION=

Authenticate

Run an automated authentication script to sign in.

If running from a terminal in a GUI environment:

npm run perf:auth -- --headed

This will save your logged-in user state to ./performance-tests/.auth.

Tip: This runs in headed mode to troubleshoot browser or network permissions. Jumping straight to headless mode often leads to unexpected timeouts. Once headed mode auth has succeeded, you can typically switch to headless mode without any problems.

If running from terminal session over SSH:

xvfb-run --server-args="-screen 0 1024x768x24" npm run perf:auth

This runs in headless mode using X Virtual Frame Buffer to create a virtual display. Subsequent calls needn't typically be wrapped by xvfb-run.

Validate Sign-in State

To double check that your user state is valid & accessible to the test suite, you can run:

npm run perf:check

This will navigate to the home page & take a screenshot. You can review the screenshot in ./performance-tests/screenshots.

If it didn't allow the automation to hydrate from a signed-in state, the test will fail with an error.

Usage

To generate a Lighthouse performance audit, run:

npm run perf:test

You should see logs in the terminal from network requests, page loads, etc.

Wait until the test passes (~30s).

Performance reports will be available in html and csv format in ./performance-tests/reports.