A CLI tool to measure performance continuously and also integrate it into your CI. It provides lot's of DX features, nice commands with rich arguments and integration with the latest dev tooling.

It will enable you to measure bootstrap as well as runtime performance with minimum effort, speed up your performance test development and reduced the needed code and configuration to a minimum.

In addition, it is always up-to-date with the latest Chrome DevTools features.

Benefits

• ⚙ Run it in your CI
• ▶ Execute ChromeDevTools recorder exports
• 🏃‍♀️ Measure Runtime performance
• 🦮 Zero setup cost
• 🤓 Excellent DX through --dryRun and friends
• ⚙ Nx plugin user-flow-nx-plugin to generate/execute/migrate lighthouse user flows
• 🛸 Advanced architecture with UFO's
• 🔥 Write tests directly in TypeScript (we compile them live)
• 🧠 Use best practices out of the box
• 🅾 No boilerplate

Run npm i @push-based/user-flow --save-dev or yarn add @push-based/user-flow --dev to install the library.

After that you can run:
user-flow --helpor user-flow --help

You can also use npx to run it in e.g. the CI setup: npx @push-based/user-flow --help

As the CLI needs a npm project to run in we explain 2 common things, using the package in an existing project and using it in a fresh project. Both ways require a node and npm project setup to install user-flow and folders to store the reports and test files.

0. have node v14.X.X installed
   run node -v and npm -v to check it.

To start from scratch read setup an empty project

In this chapter we will learn how to install and configure user flows, as well as create a first example test and see the resulting performance report.

0. Install:

npm i @push-based/user-flow --save-dev

1. Set up the .user-flowrc.json config file

Run

npx @push-based/user-flow init

or if you already installed it,

npx user-flow init

in the console and accept the default value for every question.

This results in the following file:

./.user-flowrc.json

{
  "collect": {
    "url": "https://coffee-cart.netlify.app/",
    "ufPath": "./user-flows"
  },
  "persist": { "outPath": "./measures", "format": ["html"] }
}

2. The CLI automatically creates an example user-flow. (./user-flows/basic-navigation.uf.mts)

It is a simple navigation measurement to start from.

./basic-navigation.uf.mts

import {
  UserFlowInteractionsFn,
  UserFlowContext,
  UserFlowProvider
} from '@push-based/user-flow';

// Your custom interactions with the page 
const interactions: UserFlowInteractionsFn = async (ctx: UserFlowContext): Promise<any> => {
  const { page, flow, browser, collectOptions } = ctx;
  const { url } = collectOptions;

  // Navigate to URL
  await flow.navigate(url, {
    name: `Navigate to ${url}`,
  });

};

export default {
  flowOptions: { name: "Order Coffee" },
  interactions,
} satisfies UserFlowProvider;

3. Run CLI You can directly run the cli command. The typescript files will get resolved and compiled live.

npx user-flow collect or just npx user-flow as collect is the default.

This will execute the user flow and opens the HTML report in the browser:

For more information on how to write user-flows read in the Writing user flows for the CLI section.

Optionally you can pass params to overwrite the values form .user-flowrc.json in the file directly or over the CLI:

npx user-flow --ufPath=./user-flows-new --outPath=./user-flows-reports --url=https://localhost:4200

🤓 DX Tip:
For a faster development process you can use the --dryRun option to skip measurement and perform the interactions only
This is a multitude faster e.g. 3s vs 53s for a simple 2 step flow with navigation

You can read more about tricks and DX the general CLI features in our docs.

Run the default command over:
@npx @push-based/user-flow [options]

Description:
The default command forwards all options to the collect command.

Run command over:
@npx @push-based/user-flow init [options]

Description:
This command helps you to set up a .user-flowrc.json and asks for input over CLI prompts.

As a result we get a .user-flowrc.json and an example flow if answered with yes.

🤓 DX Tip: Set up user flows in a sub directory:
npx @push-based/user-flow init --rcPath ./path/to/project/.user-flowrc.json

Run command over:
@npx @push-based/user-flow collect [options] or @npx @push-based/user-flow [options] as it is the default command.

Description:
This command executes a set of user-flow definitions against the target URL and saves the output.

💡 Pro Tip: CLI arguments that accept multiple values can be set by using the param multiple times in a row:

As an example we could apply two different formats as output for the collect command: npx user-flow collect --format=json --format=md

The CLI supports the official user-flow/lighthouse configuration.

Details on how to work with configurations can be found in the configuratin section.

You can think of user flows as front end e2e tests which measures performance related information during the test.

Write basic user flows leveraging all 3 measurement modes of lighthouse.

User flow measurement modes

Icon	Mode	Measure	Performance	Accessibility	Best Practices	SEO	PWA
	Navigation	Page load	100% / 30	100% / 30	100% / 30	100% / 30	✔ / 7
	Timespan	User Interaction	10 / 10	❌	7 / 7	❌	❌
	Snapshot	Current page state	4 / 4	16 / 16	5 / 5	9 / 9	❌

When you execute and open the user-flow report you will see the measurement modes also visualized there.

Organizing testing logic is an art. If you don't own that knowledge, the amount of low-level code get's a night mare to maintain in bigger projects...

This is the reason we introduced UFO's! Organize clutter code 👽 in developer friendly shells 🛸

See ufo-architecture for more details.

Chrome DevTools provides a feature to help with record and export user interactions. This can replace any handwritten code and organizes interactions in a JSON structure.

This library provides a way to replay and enrich those interactions over the CLI.

See recorder-exports for more details.

With just a few steps you can run your user flows in as a GitHub workflow to enrich your PR's with report summaries as comments.

Automatically create a workflow with:
npx user-flow init --generateGhWorkflow

See github-workflow-integration for more details.

With just a few steps you can run your user flows in as a Nx workspace to enrich your DX with a nx-plugin.

Automatically generate/execute/migrate with user-flow-nx-plugin:

• nx g @push-based/user-flow-nx-plugin:install
• nx g @push-based/user-flow-nx-plugin:target e2e

See user-flow-nx-plugin for more details.

• angular-movies

• lighthouse viewer
• Understanding the lighthouse result
• lighthouse user flows
• lighthouse user flow recorder
• lighthouse user flow recorder features

made with ❤ by push-based.io