Dotdiff

Dotdiff is a very basic wrapper around imåge magick compare program which works with both Capybara and RSpec to capture and compare the images with a simple rspec matcher.

It is now also possible to snapshot a particular element on the page just by using the standard capybara finders - which once the element is found will query the browser for its dimensions and placement on the page and use that metadata to crop using chunky_png from a full page snapshot.

It can also hide certain elements via executing javascript for elements which can change with different display suchas username or user specific details, but only for full page screenshots.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

This is the same for JRuby platform as well (both MRI and JRuby versions of gem is uploaded)

gem 'dotdiff'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install dotdiff

Usage

Dependencies

First ensure to install image magick binary which is available via apt-get or brew

In your spec/spec_helper

require 'dotdiff'

If you want the rspec_matcher require the following as well

require 'dotdiff/rspec_matcher'

Configuration

In an initializer you can configure certain options example shown below within Dotdiff

DotDiff.configure do |config|
  config.image_magick_diff_bin = `which compare`
  config.pixel_threshold = { type: 'percent', value: 0.04 }
  config.image_magick_options = '-metric AE'
  config.image_store_path = File.join('/home', 'user', 'images')
  config.xpath_elements_to_hide = ["id('main')"]
  config.hide_elements_on_non_full_screen_screenshot = true
  config.failure_image_path = File.join('/home', 'user', 'failure_comparisions')
end

Spec usage

For a full page screenshot you can use the below;

expect(page).to match_image('HomePage', subdir: 'Normitec')

For a specific element screenshot you can use like so;

expect(find('#login-form')).to match_image('LoginForm', subdir: 'Normitec')

The only difference for the element specific is passing a specific element in the expect parameter.

Configuration Options

Config	Description	Example	Default	Required
image_magick_diff_bin	Location of the image magick compare binary file	`which compare`	N/A	Yes
image_store_path	The root path to store the base images	File.join('/home', 'user','images')	nil	Yes
xpath_elements_to_hide	When taking full page screenshots it will hide elements specified that might change each time and re-shows them after the screenshot. It doesn't use this option for taking screenshots of specific elements.	["id('main')", "//div[contains(@class, 'formy'])[1]"]	[]	No
hide_elements_on_non_full_screen_screenshot	When taking non full page screenshots whether to also hide elements using `xpath_elements_to_hide` or not hide anything at all	true	false	No
failure_image_path	When a comparison occurs and the perceptual_diff binary returns a failure with the message. It will dump the new image taken for comparison to this directory. If not supplied it will not move the images from the temporary location that it is generated at.	File.join('/home', 'user','failures')	nil	No
pixel_threshold	This validates the output from compare is within your specified threshold_config which supports pixel or percent value	{ type: 'percent', value: 0.03 }	{ type: 'pixel', value: 100 }	No
image_magick_options	This allows you to pass some custom options to image magick	'-fuzz 10% -metric RSME'	'-fuzz 5% -metric AE'	No

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/jnormington/dotdiff.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Whats still to do

Its not fully completed yet but is usable in its current state.

Improve the message output to extract just the fail line
Add an integration spec

dotdiff

Development

Runtime