E2E Backend Setup - nself-org/nchat GitHub Wiki

E2E Backend Setup

This page documents how the E2E CI workflow provisions the nself backend stack for Playwright tests.

Overview

The three-shard e2e-web job provisions the nself backend on each ephemeral GitHub Actions runner before running the Playwright test slice. Because GHA jobs run on isolated runners, the backend must be started WITHIN the same job that runs the tests.

Backend port map

The nself default port assignments used in E2E:

Service Port Health endpoint
Hasura GraphQL 8080 http://localhost:8080/healthz
Nhost Auth 4000 http://localhost:4000/healthz
MinIO (S3) 9000 —
Postgres 5432 — (internal only)
Redis 6379 — (internal only)
Nginx (SSL terminator) 443/80 — (not used in CI; tests use direct ports)

These ports are the nself standard defaults; they are not changed by nchat. No new ports are introduced by tracking backend/docker-compose.yml.

backend/docker-compose.yml in git

backend/docker-compose.yml is tracked in this repo as a CI exception to the standard "generated files are gitignored" rule. The nself CLI's nself start --skip-build command requires the compose file to be present at checkout. Tracking it allows CI to use the pre-generated stack definition without running nself build (which requires a plugin license key).

The file is regenerated locally by nself build on every developer machine; CI uses the committed version. The backend/.gitignore exception is:

docker-compose.*.yml
!docker-compose.yml

Provisioning steps in CI

  1. Install nself CLI binary from GitHub release
  2. Create backend/.env by copying backend/.env.dev (the nself CLI detects a project via the presence of a bare .env file)
  3. Create build-state marker so --skip-build skips the legacy artifact check
  4. Run nself start --skip-build --allow-legacy --quiet
  5. Wait for Hasura health (up to 120 s)
  6. Wait for Auth health (up to 120 s)
  7. Seed E2E test users via the Auth API

Test users

All test users use password password123 and are seeded before tests run:

Email Role
[email protected] owner
[email protected] admin
[email protected] moderator
[email protected] member
[email protected] guest

Seeding is idempotent — HTTP 409/422 (already exists) is treated as success.