Background processes

If you’re using Specsheet as part of a build pipeline for a server, you’ll need to manage running the server in the background while Specsheet tests the running process by sending requests to it. The pipeline usually goes like this:

  • Start the server process in the background.
  • Wait a few seconds for it to become available.
  • Run all the tests.
  • Afterwards, kill the server.

This is possible, but takes a lot of work to do correctly.

Running a process in the background

By running Specsheet with the --exec command-line option set, it will spawn a process using the given shell command.

Waiting before running the first test

Servers can sometimes take a while to start up before being able to process incoming requests. If Specsheet sends requests too early, the first few tests will fail.

A shell script could just add a call to sleep 5; after spawning the server in the background, delaying the time Specsheet gets started by five seconds. Specsheet offers this too, with the --exec-delay option, which takes a value in seconds.

specsheet tests.toml --exec ./run_server.sh --exec-delay 3

However, there’s another way: as Specsheet has access to the background process’s output, it can wait until a line of output matches a pattern that signifies the server is running. --exec-glob

For example, say you want to test a server that prints Server running (port 8080) when it’s ready:

$ specsheet tests.toml --exec ./run_server.sh --exec-glob "Server running (port *)"

Using a delay and a glob pattern together will add the delay after a line matches the pattern.

Log output

If the process outputs writes to standard output or standard error, Specsheet will intersperse the lines of output with the times tests were started and stopped.