Elastic Synthetics Recorder

Installation and Usage

Download and Install

We publish releases of the Script Recorder on its GitHub repo. You can find downloadable installers there for a variety of platforms.

Note that the Script Recorder is in a Tech Preview phase at the moment, and not supported.

Download and unpack the appropriate installer for your platform, and install it.

Usage

This section describes the basic usage of the Script Recorder. It explains how to start a journey and record steps, as well as testing and outputting a completed script.

After starting up the application, you may input a URL. This URL will be the starting point of the journey script Elastic Synthetics will create.

Once you start a journey, Elastic Synthetics will record actions based on your interaction with the browser window. This includes clicking on text, navigation, focusing on inputs like buttons and text fields, and more. As you complete your journey, you will see the actions you are generating populate in the Script Recorder's window.

You can also add assertions to your journey. Use these to make determinations about the state of the page you are testing. Assertions can include checks for things like the visibility of an element, or the contents of a text field.

The Script Recorder also includes a Pause feature. When you pause the recording session, you may click around the browser window without recording any actions. Un-pause the Recorder to continue recording journey actions.

At any point during or after the recording process concludes, you may test your script. When you click the Test button, Elastic Synthetics will run the journey you have defined. After the test concludes, the Recorder will display results on a per-step basis.

When you are satisfied with the script you have generated, you can save it to file using the Export script button. Additionally, you can display the generated JavaScript code using the Show script feature.

Develop

Note: the recorder is intended to be run against a specific version of node/npm. If you use nvm to manage your versions, you can simply run nvm use to switch to the appropriate version. If not, you can view the current supported version in the .nvmrc file. You can see potential error outputs as a result of using the incorrect version below in the troubleshooting section.

Install the dependencies

npm install

Run the recorder app in dev mode.

npm run dev

Managing Playwright dependency

When updating the version of @elastic/synthetics(called Synthetics agent hereafter), it is important to align the version of Playwright that the Synthetics agent uses and the forked Playwright that is installed by the recorder. Steps to update the Playwright is as followed:

1. Go to @elastic/playwright, fetch upstream microsoft:main into main if needed. We keep our modifications in synthetics-recorder branch. It is supposed to have only one extra commit(84309bf)) compared to the main branch. If main branch has new commits, fetch the changes into synthetics-recorder branch by pulling it with rebase option

2. Pull the remote changes to your machine. If necessary, set the remote as follows:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/microsoft/playwright.git
git remote add elastic https://github.com/elastic/playwright.git
git remote -v
// prints:
// upstream	https://github.com/microsoft/playwright.git (fetch)
// upstream	https://github.com/microsoft/playwright.git (push)
// elastic  https://github.com/elastic/playwright.git (fetch)
// elastic  https://github.com/elastic/playwright.git (push)

2. Confirm the Playwright version from Synthetics agent's package.json:

// @elastic/synthetics's package.json
...
    "playwright-core": "=1.20.1",
...

3. Fetch the tags from upstream, checkout to the version 1.20.1, and create a new branch:

git fetch upstream --tags
git checkout -b 1.20.1-recorder v1.20.1

4. Cherry-pick the commit from synthetics-recorder branch, then run npm run build. Make sure you've uncommented L14(!packages/playwright-core/lib/ in .gitignore to include all the generated libs file. Check all the files under packages/playwright-core/lib are staged, then commit and push it to elastic remote:

git cherry-pick 84309bf
# solve conflicts if necessary
npm run build
# uncomment `!packages/playwright-core/lib/` in .gitignore (L14)
git add .
git commit -m "feat: generate libs"
git push  --set-upstream elastic 1.20.1-recorder

5. Test new changes in the Recorder by updating Recorder's package.json. Update playwright dependency to the branch you pushed from above step:

// @elastic/synthetics-recorder's package.json
...
    "playwright": "https://gitpkg.now.sh/elastic/playwright/packages/playwright-core?1.20.1-recorder",
...

For now, we are doing it all manually, However, we should consider automating the process.

Build

Build and Package the app for all platforms

npm run pack -- -mwl