End-to-End Setup Guide: Integrating Playwright + Cucumber with Harness CI

Integrating end-to-end (E2E) automation suites into enterprise CI/CD pipelines requires robust reporting, dynamic execution controls, and seamless artifact management. Here is a guide on setting up a Node.js + Playwright + Cucumber.js test suite using Harness CI, configured with dual-repository dependencies, parallel execution capabilities, and dashboard-ready reporting. Key Architectural Setup - Two-Repo Architecture: - Repository A (Application Automation Repo): Contains application-specific feature files, page objects, and pipeline definitions. - Repository B (Shared Framework Repo): Hosts core framework utilities, custom assertions, and base drivers consumed as a pinned dependency. Tech Stack: Node.js, Playwright, Cucumber.js, Allure/JUnit reporting. Step 1: Configure Harness Connectors & Secrets Set up these foundational resources within your Harness account: Connectors: GIT_CONNECTOR: Grants access to both application and framework GitHub repositories. K8S_CONNECTOR: Manages the Kubernetes build infrastructure. Secrets: - CONNECT_URL, CONNECT_USERNAME, and CONNECT_PASSWORD (and proxy settings if required). Step 2: Configure Pipelines Import your execution configurations using YAML files inside .harness/: Standard Run (.harness/e2e-poc.yaml): Used for fast PR checks. Parallel Regression (.harness/e2e-regression-parallel.yaml): Used for scheduled, high-volume regression runs. Replace placeholders such as , , and to map to your cluster environment. Step 3: Define Pipeline Triggers Set up two primary execution workflows: - Pull Request (PR) Trigger: - Event: Pull Request to main/POC branch. - Runtime Variables: cucumberTags=@smoke - Scheduled Nightly Trigger: - Event: Scheduled Cron. - Runtime Variables: cucumberTags=@regression, cucumberParallel=4 Step 4: Test Report & Artifact Collection To ensure test metrics display properly on the Harness dashboard, configure both JUnit parsing and raw artifact archiving. Generated Outputs: reports/junit-report.xml (parsed by Harness for test metrics) reports/cucumber_report.json reports/allure-results & HTML reports test-results/screenshots & test-results/traces (captured on failure) Harness UI Configuration Steps: Under execution reporting options, enable JUnit Test Report Collection and point it to reports/junit-report.xml. - Enable Artifact Collection with the following paths: - reports/** - test-results/** Optional: Set strictReporting=true to force pipeline failure if report outputs are missing. Step 5: Best Practices for Headless Environments Browser Fallbacks: Configure cross-platform handling in your hooks file to run branded browsers (like Edge) locally, while falling back to standard headless containers (e.g., Chromium) in CI Linux pods. Branch Protection: Enforce GitHub branch rules requiring status checks from Harness to pass prior to merging PRs. Shared Framework Management: For quick POCs, pin Repository B as a Git dependency in package.json. For production, publish the framework as a versioned private package. Top comments (0)