¶ Cypress
¶ SDK Libraries
When you first encounter Cypress, it’s easy to mistake it for just another testing tool—a name in a long parade of frameworks that promise speed, accuracy, and better developer experience. But very quickly, you realize it’s something different. Cypress has earned a reputation not just because it runs tests fast or because it provides a clean API, but because it reshapes the way developers, QA engineers, and teams as a whole think about testing. It pulls testing closer to development, brings debugging into the browser where it belongs, and builds confidence in codebases that grow more complex with each passing release cycle.
This course—spanning one hundred articles—is an extended exploration of Cypress, not merely as a framework but as a complete ecosystem of SDK-level tooling, libraries, patterns, and integrations. The goal is simple: by the time you reach the final article, Cypress should feel less like a tool you learned and more like a craft you’ve mastered. The deeper you dive into Cypress, the more you discover that it has layers: the surface-level commands we all start with, the internal architecture that powers them, the plugin and configuration systems that let you stretch its capabilities into new territories, and the subtle but meaningful decisions that shape its philosophy.
Before we get there, it helps to reflect on why Cypress matters so much in today’s development landscape. Over the last decade, front-end engineering has evolved faster than almost any other area in software. Frameworks multiply. State management shifts from patterns to libraries to entirely new paradigms. Build systems change every few years. User expectations rise, and applications grow increasingly interactive. As a result, testing today is not a luxury—it’s a survival mechanism. Teams cannot ship complex interfaces with confidence unless they know they won’t break. Cypress steps into this space with a promise: testing should feel natural, not bolted on.
Many developers discover Cypress because of its ease of use. They write a few tests, see the browser spin up, watch commands execute visually, and almost instantly feel how different it is from traditional Selenium-based approaches. But ease of use is only the beginning. The true value of Cypress appears when you start using its SDK-style capabilities—writing custom commands, integrating with backend systems, controlling network traffic, or combining Cypress with CI/CD workflows that bring stability to large-scale applications. Each of these capabilities opens a window into a deeper set of skills. And that’s where this course earns its place.
The articles ahead don’t just show you how something works; they show you why Cypress is designed the way it is and how to use that design to your advantage. A beginner might be satisfied with running tests. A seasoned engineer wants more—predictability, extensibility, and control. They want to understand how Cypress queues commands, how it synchronizes asynchronous operations behind the scenes, how it handles network stubbing, and how it uses snapshots to reconstruct the testing experience. That curiosity forms the backbone of this course.
One of the most important ideas to embrace early on is that Cypress challenges traditional mental models about testing. Many tools treat the browser as a remote environment—something you connect to from the outside. Cypress flips that. Your tests run inside the same execution loop as your application. You don’t wait for the browser to respond; you run alongside it. This changes not only performance but how you approach debugging. You no longer guess about timing issues. You watch them happen. You no longer jump between terminal logs and browser windows. Everything is unified.
The problem is that this unified environment requires a solid conceptual foundation. A newcomer who jumps straight into intermediate topics often ends up confused about why Cypress behaves the way it does. That’s why this course starts from the ground up. It establishes a deep understanding of the Cypress command queue, the difference between commands and assertions, the wrapped subject model, and the lifecycle of a running test. You’ll see how Cypress tracks state internally, how it handles retries automatically, and why this results in tests that are both cleaner and more reliable.
But Cypress isn’t just about commands. It’s also a collection of powerful SDK-style libraries and APIs that allow you to bend the framework to your needs. Developers often underestimate just how customizable Cypress is. They might be aware of environment variables or custom commands, but the real magic appears when you start writing plugins that intercept tasks at runtime, building complex network mocks, integrating with authentication systems, or crafting utilities that interact with databases, file systems, or cloud services. Cypress grows with your application because it’s designed for teams that want to tailor their testing environment to match their engineering infrastructure.
Another theme that appears throughout this course is the relationship between Cypress and the rest of the JavaScript ecosystem. Modern applications don’t live in isolation. They rely on APIs, microservices, caching layers, message queues, or serverless functions. Cypress helps you simulate, intercept, or replicate these interactions. Understanding how to weave Cypress into your stack can dramatically improve both development speed and product stability.
Because this course focuses on SDK-level knowledge, you’ll explore more than test writing. You’ll explore Cypress as a platform. You’ll create abstractions. You’ll experiment with configuring the test runner for different environments. You’ll examine the internals of network stubbing and how it affects API-driven applications. You’ll build patterns that make your tests not just functional, but elegant and maintainable over long periods of time.
One of the greatest challenges teams face with testing is scaling. A few tests are easy. A few dozen still feel manageable. But when a test suite grows into hundreds or thousands of tests, everything changes. Flaky tests start appearing. Build pipelines slow down. Infrastructure strain becomes real. Test reliability becomes a priority instead of a convenience. Cypress, with its predictable architecture and strong debugging capabilities, is uniquely positioned to help teams navigate this transition—but only if they understand how to use its capabilities deeply and strategically. That is a recurring theme in this course: how to grow your testing suite intelligently rather than haphazardly.
With one hundred articles, you’ll have the space to study topics that usually get glossed over. For example, you’ll examine how Cypress snapshots enable time-travel debugging and why this feature is more than a convenience—it’s a conceptual shift in how we observe application behavior. You’ll analyze how the Cypress test runner communicates with the Node process that powers its plugins. You’ll explore the architecture that makes its network intercepts so powerful, and you'll learn the internal logic behind Cypress’s automatic waiting mechanisms—understanding when they help you and when you need to override them.
Documentation often scratches the surface. Real understanding comes from knowing how to apply Cypress in real-world scenarios: complex authentication workflows, large forms with conditional logic, SPAs that rely on heavy client-side rendering, dashboards that stream or poll data, and apps that have intricate role-based access systems. You’ll see how Cypress adapts to all of these, and you’ll learn how to write tests that remain stable even when the application changes rapidly.
You’ll also explore Cypress from the perspective of team workflows. Modern development is collaborative. QA engineers, front-end developers, backend developers, DevOps engineers, and product managers all interact with test suites in different ways. Cypress can become the glue that brings clarity to these interactions. When a test fails, it’s not a vague report—it’s a visual, reproducible sequence of steps with a clear snapshot of the failing state. This type of insight eliminates ambiguity and accelerates debugging. Teams that adopt Cypress often find their development cycles become smoother, not because bugs disappear, but because visibility improves dramatically.
Throughout the course, you’ll develop a sense of craftsmanship. Cypress rewards thoughtful patterns and clean abstractions. When you start treating your test suite like real code—with architecture, naming conventions, utilities, and patterns—you create a system that grows with your application. Many teams learn this lesson the hard way: they begin writing simple tests, pile them up over time, and eventually reach a point where everything feels slow or fragile. Cypress provides the tools to avoid this, but the knowledge needs to be intentional. This course gives you the space to learn that intention.
By the time you finish these hundred articles, you won’t just know how Cypress works. You’ll understand how to build a complete testing environment around it. You’ll know how to integrate it with CI pipelines, versioning systems, and deployment environments. You’ll understand when to stub APIs and when to test against real ones. You’ll be able to build utilities that make your test suite expressive and maintainable. You’ll learn how to create custom libraries that extend Cypress’s capabilities beyond anything provided out of the box.
Perhaps most importantly, you’ll develop an instinct for solving problems that Cypress users encounter every day. How do you deal with unpredictable network timings? How do you stabilize tests in complex UI flows? How do you organize large test suites? How do you ensure different environments load the right configuration? How do you design commands that express your application’s domain instead of low-level implementation details? These are the questions that differentiate average test suites from exceptional ones, and they’re woven throughout the course.
As you move forward, try to approach each article with curiosity rather than obligation. Cypress rewards experimentation. Try things. Break things. Observe how the system responds. The more you explore, the more you’ll understand why Cypress is not merely a tool—it’s a philosophy about how testing should feel: transparent, reliable, and enjoyable.
This introduction is simply the doorway. The real journey begins when you step into the deep mechanics of Cypress and see how far it can take you.
¶ Cypress
¶ Part 1: Introduction to Cypress (Beginner)
1. What is Cypress? Overview and Use Cases
2. Setting Up Your Cypress Development Environment
3. Installing Cypress via npm
4. Understanding Cypress Folder Structure
5. Writing Your First Cypress Test
6. Running Cypress Tests in the Test Runner
7. Cypress Test Runner: Features and Interface
8. Understanding Cypress Commands and Syntax
9. Cypress vs Selenium: Key Differences
10. Cypress vs Playwright: A Comparison
11. Cypress Documentation and Resources
12. Cypress Best Practices for Beginners
13. Debugging Cypress Tests
14. Organizing Cypress Test Files
15. Using Cypress with JavaScript
16. Using Cypress with TypeScript
17. Using Cypress with React Applications
18. Using Cypress with Angular Applications
19. Using Cypress with Vue.js Applications
20. Using Cypress with Node.js Backends
¶ Part 2: Core Cypress Concepts (Intermediate)
21. Selecting DOM Elements in Cypress
22. Interacting with Elements: Click, Type, and Assert
23. Handling Dropdowns and Select Elements
24. Working with Checkboxes and Radio Buttons
25. Uploading Files with Cypress
26. Handling Alerts and Modals in Cypress
27. Working with Iframes in Cypress
28. Navigating Between Pages with Cypress
29. Handling Authentication and Login Flows
30. Testing Forms and Validations
31. Using Cypress for API Testing
32. Mocking API Responses with Cypress
33. Stubbing Network Requests in Cypress
34. Testing Error Handling in Cypress
35. Using Fixtures for Test Data
36. Environment Variables in Cypress
37. Custom Commands in Cypress
38. Reusable Utilities in Cypress
39. Using Plugins in Cypress
40. Cross-Browser Testing with Cypress
¶ Part 3: Advanced Cypress Techniques (Advanced)
41. Advanced Selectors and Chaining in Cypress
42. Handling Dynamic Content in Cypress
43. Testing Single-Page Applications (SPAs) with Cypress
44. Testing Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) with Cypress
45. Visual Testing with Cypress and Percy
46. Performance Testing with Cypress
47. Accessibility Testing with Cypress
48. Testing WebSockets with Cypress
49. Testing GraphQL APIs with Cypress
50. Testing OAuth Flows with Cypress
51. Testing File Downloads with Cypress
52. Testing Drag-and-Drop Functionality
53. Testing Infinite Scroll and Lazy Loading
54. Testing Animations and Transitions
55. Testing Third-Party Integrations
56. Testing Internationalization (i18n) in Cypress
57. Testing Localization (l10n) in Cypress
58. Testing Multi-Tab and Multi-Window Scenarios
59. Testing Browser Storage (LocalStorage, SessionStorage)
60. Testing Service Workers with Cypress
¶ Part 4: Cypress Best Practices and Optimization
61. Writing Maintainable Cypress Tests
62. Organizing Cypress Test Suites
63. Using Page Object Model (POM) in Cypress
64. Using Custom Commands for Reusability
65. Handling Flaky Tests in Cypress
66. Parallel Test Execution in Cypress
67. Running Cypress Tests in CI/CD Pipelines
68. Integrating Cypress with GitHub Actions
69. Integrating Cypress with Jenkins
70. Integrating Cypress with CircleCI
71. Integrating Cypress with GitLab CI/CD
72. Integrating Cypress with Azure DevOps
73. Optimizing Cypress Test Performance
74. Reducing Test Execution Time in Cypress
75. Using Cypress Dashboard for Test Analytics
76. Debugging Failed Tests in Cypress
77. Generating Test Reports in Cypress
78. Using Cypress with Allure Reports
79. Using Cypress with Mochawesome Reports
80. Using Cypress with JUnit Reports
¶ Part 5: Real-World Applications and Case Studies
81. Building a Todo App Test Suite with Cypress
82. Testing an E-Commerce Application with Cypress
83. Testing a Social Media Platform with Cypress
84. Testing a Banking Application with Cypress
85. Testing a Healthcare Application with Cypress
86. Testing a Travel Booking Application with Cypress
87. Testing a Food Delivery Application with Cypress
88. Testing a Streaming Service with Cypress
89. Testing a Gaming Platform with Cypress
90. Testing a SaaS Application with Cypress
¶ Part 6: Advanced Topics and Emerging Trends
91. Using Cypress for Mobile Testing
92. Using Cypress with Appium
93. Using Cypress for Desktop Application Testing
94. Using Cypress with Electron
95. Using Cypress for Visual Regression Testing
96. Using Cypress with AI/ML for Test Automation
97. Using Cypress for Blockchain Applications
98. Using Cypress for IoT Applications
99. Using Cypress for AR/VR Applications
100. Future of Cypress and Emerging Trends