Background Server GitHub Action

GitHub Action to run a command (e.g. a test) while also running another command (e.g. a server) in the background.

Please note that this code is mainly derived from cypress/github-action, yet this action tries to be more general

Usage

Basic

Run a node js server in the background while executing tests

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          command: npm run tests
          start: npm start

With Build command

You can also specify a build command before

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          command: npm run tests
          build: npm run build
          start: npm run start

Multiple commands command

You can also specify a build command before

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          command: npm run generate-docs, npm run tests
          build: npm run build
          start: npm run api, npm run web

Windows

Sometimes on Windows you need to run a different start command. You can use start-windows and command-windows parameter for this, which takes precedence over the normal commands when on Windows.

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          command: npm run tests
          command-windows: npm run tests:windows
          build: npm run build
          start: npm run start
          start-windows: npm run start:windows

Current working directory

If you want to set a specific directory where your commands are run, you can specify the path via the cwd option

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          cwd: ./packages/example
          build: npm run build
          start: npm run start

Wait for server

If you are starting a local server and it takes a while to start, you can add a parameter wait-on and pass url to wait for the server to respond.

name: Run Tests
on: [push]
jobs:
  run-test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-20.04
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Run E2E Tests
        uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
        with:
          command: npm run tests
          build: npm run build
          start: npm run start
           # quote the url to be safe against YML parsing surprises
          wait-on: 'http://localhost:8080'

By default, wait-on will retry for 60 seconds. You can pass a custom timeout in seconds using wait-on-timeout.

- uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
    with:
      command: npm run tests
      build: npm run build
      start: npm run start
      wait-on: 'http://localhost:8080'
      # wait for 2 minutes for the server to respond
      wait-on-timeout: 120

You can wait for multiple URLs to respond by separating urls with a comma

- uses: BerniWittmann/background-server-action@v1
    with:
      command: npm run tests
      build: npm run build
      start: npm run start
      wait-on: 'http://localhost:8080, http://localhost:4000'

The action will wait for the first url to respond, then will check the second url, and so on.