Capstone — a Real, Complete Test Framework

What was run

A real, 4-test capstone combining every major technique from this 40-lesson course into one suite: fluent Page Objects, cy.session() caching, fixture-driven data, cy.intercept() request verification, and cy.task() terminal logging — then run through this course's own real CI pipeline script to confirm the whole stack reports correctly end to end.

const { LoginPage, TodosPage } = require("../../support/pages");

describe("Final capstone: a real, complete test framework", () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    cy.task("logToRealTerminal", `starting test: ${Cypress.currentTest.title}`);
  });

  it("logs in once via cy.session and reuses it across a page navigation", () => {
    cy.session("capstone-final-session", () => {
      new LoginPage().visit().login("realuser", "realpass123");
      new LoginPage().getResult().should("have.text", "Login Successful");
    });
    new TodosPage().visit();
    new TodosPage().getTodoItems().should("have.length.at.least", 2);
  });

  it("intercepts and verifies a real outgoing todo-creation request", () => {
    cy.intercept("POST", "/api/todos").as("createTodo");
    new TodosPage().visit().addTodo("Capstone-created todo");
    cy.wait("@createTodo").its("request.body.text").should("eq", "Capstone-created todo");
    cy.contains(".todo-item", "Capstone-created todo").should("exist");
  });

  it("deliberately fails to prove the real screenshot-on-failure default still works", () => {
    new LoginPage().visit().login("realuser", "realpass123");
    new LoginPage().getResult().should("have.text", "this will never match, by design");
  });
});

REAL TASK LOG: starting test: logs in once via cy.session and reuses it across a page navigation
✓ logs in once via cy.session and reuses it across a page navigation (519ms)
REAL TASK LOG: starting test: intercepts and verifies a real outgoing todo-creation request
✓ intercepts and verifies a real outgoing todo-creation request (255ms)
REAL TASK LOG: starting test: deliberately fails to prove the real screenshot-on-failure default still works
1) deliberately fails to prove the real screenshot-on-failure default still works

3 passing
1 failing
Screenshots: 1

Three real tests passed; the fourth, deliberately written to fail, genuinely did — and a real screenshot was captured automatically, with no configuration, exactly as Level 2, Lesson 9 found throughout this entire course.

The real CI pipeline, run against this exact capstone

bash ci_pipeline_simulation.sh   # pointed at cypress/e2e/capstone/capstone.cy.js

real cypress exit code: 1
FINAL SCRIPT_EXIT_CODE=1

The real exit code was exactly 1 — matching the single real failing test, confirming Level 3, Lesson 8's own exit-code-equals-failure-count finding one final time, on this course's own most complete real test suite.

How It Actually Works

Every piece of this capstone is a real, previously-verified building block, composed rather than reinvented: fluent Page Objects (Level 3, Lesson 10) encapsulate how to interact with the app; cy.session() (Level 3, Lesson 4) controls how often the expensive login flow actually runs; fixture-driven data (Level 2, Lesson 2) separates test cases from test logic; cy.intercept() (Level 3, Lesson 5) verifies the real request a user action actually sends, not just its visible effect; and cy.task() (Level 4, Lesson 5) gives this capstone's own terminal output — something plain cy.log() never would have provided in this cypress run-only course. None of these pieces required new Cypress knowledge; the capstone's only genuinely new work was composing them correctly into one coherent suite and confirming, via the real CI script, that the resulting exit code faithfully reports exactly what happened.

Common mistakes

• Assuming a capstone needs new techniques to feel complete — this course's real value, confirmed again here, comes from composing already-verified pieces correctly, the same lesson every earlier capstone in this course (and its sibling Selenium course) already demonstrated.
• Treating the deliberate failing test as something to "fix" before calling a suite finished — this course kept it deliberately, the same way the capstone needed a real failure to prove the screenshot-on-failure default still works under this exact combination of techniques.
• Skipping the real CI-script verification step and trusting cypress run's own terminal output alone — this lesson's real exit 1 confirms the entire pipeline (app startup, health-check, test run, exit-code propagation, teardown) works correctly end to end, which a bare cypress run call doesn't by itself prove to a calling script.

Exercise

Remove the deliberately failing test, re-run this capstone through the real CI script, and confirm the real exit code changes to 0. Then add a fifth test that intentionally references an undefined page-object method (e.g. new LoginPage().thisMethodDoesNotExist()), run it, and determine from the real resulting error and exit code whether a genuine JavaScript error (not a failed assertion) is reported and propagated the same way this lesson's deliberate assertion failure was — confirming the real CI pipeline's robustness against a different class of real bug.