emaui/apps/e2e

End-to-end browser tests

Playwright, driving the portal and the backoffice in a real browser against a real API and a real database.

# from emaui/
npx nx e2e @ema-platform/e2e            # or: npx playwright test --config apps/e2e/playwright.config.ts
npx playwright test --config apps/e2e/playwright.config.ts --headed --debug
npx playwright show-report ../../dist/e2e-report

What it runs against

Nothing shared with your own dev stack. The suite starts its own servers, on its own ports, against its own database:

	port	notes
API	3011	node dist/main.js with explicit env
Portal	4302	vite build --mode e2e then vite preview
Backoffice	4303	same
Database	—	ema_e2e

This is deliberate. A developer's stack is usually already up on 3000/4200/4201, and dev/start.sh rewrites emaapi/apps/server/emaapi/.env and the apps' .env.local on every run — a suite that read those files would point at whichever stack was started last. The API is launched with DATABASE_NAME, PORT and the payment flags passed directly, and the frontends are built with --mode e2e, which picks up apps/*/.env.e2e.local (higher precedence than .env.local, so your own config is left alone).

vite preview on a production build rather than nx serve, because Nx serialises serve targets per project: with your dev portal already running, a second nx serve @ema-platform/portal waits forever on the first.

First-time setup

The E2E database has to exist and be bootstrapped once:

DB_NAME=ema_e2e ./dev/start.sh      # creates it, migrates, seeds, then starts a stack you can Ctrl-C

Afterwards the suite manages its own servers; you do not need start.sh again. Note that this run leaves the shared .env files pointing at the E2E database and its ports — rerun ./dev/start.sh plain to put them back.

How it gets its data

• Accounts are created through the UI. Every spec signs up its own applicant with a timestamped email, and deletes it in afterEach (deleteApplicant). Nothing is shared between specs, so specs can run in any order and the second run of the suite behaves exactly like the first.
• The one-time code is scraped from the API log. There is no local SMS gateway, iam.user_verifications.verification_code is argon2-hashed, and the notification rows it is delivered through carry an empty body — the log line is the only plaintext. The API is therefore started with its output teed to /tmp/ema-e2e-api.log, and support/api-log.ts reads codes written after a recorded offset. The test still types the real code into the real screen. Because the log line names no recipient, matching is by position, which is sound only while the suite runs single-worker — hence workers: 1.
• Database reads use psql, shelled out from support/db.ts, rather than adding a pg dependency to the frontend workspace for the sake of a few assertions.

Conventions

• One worker, serial. The officer queue is global state and the log-offset trick needs ordering; determinism is worth the wall-clock.
• Assertions are on what the user sees — headings, badges, buttons — with database checks only where the point is that something was persisted.
• No waitForTimeout. Wait for a condition.
• Traces, screenshots and video are retained for failures only.

Debugging a failure

Playwright writes test-results/<test>/error-context.md with a full accessibility snapshot of the page at the moment it failed — usually enough on its own. Otherwise npx playwright show-trace test-results/<test>/trace.zip.

Status

Implemented: signup → OTP → operations gate → dashboard, and the empty-state dashboard. See the parent prompt (dev/prompts/e2e-browser-tests-prompt.md) for the flows still to be written: catalogue filtering, the full application lifecycle per licence type, officer review, payment bypass, certificate download, expiry, renewal and reminders.