WebdriverIO: How to read baseURL value from wdio.conf.js. inside step definition file

❒ wdio-v5

Lately, after writing a lot of tests for a project rewrite I've came to believe the best way to store/access global config variables is via the global object.

You can define them inside the wdio.conf.js file's hooks. I defined mine in the before hook:

before: function (capabilities, specs) {
  // =================
  // Assertion Library
  // =================
  const chai    = require('chai');
  global.expect = chai.expect;
  global.assert = chai.assert;
  global.should = chai.should();
  // ======================
  // Miscellaneous Packages
  // ======================
  global.langCode = langCode;
  global.countryCode = countryCode;
  global.request = require('superagent');
  global.allowedStatusCodes = [200, 301],
  // ===============
  // Custom Commands
  // ===============
  require('./test/custom_commands/aFancyMethod');
  require('./test/custom_commands/anotherOne');
  require('./test/custom_commands/andAnotherOne');
},

Then, you can access them directly, anywhere in your test-files, or page-objects. This way, you greatly reduce the test-file's footprint (errr... codeprint) because you can call these directly in your test case:

describe(`Testing a random URL`, () => {
  it('Should return a HTTP valid status code', async () => {
    // Issue a HTTP request for the given URL:
    await request
      .head('https://random.org')
      .then(res => {
        console.info(`\n> Status code found: ${res.status} | MIME type found: '${res.type}'\n`);
        foundStatusCode = res.status;
      })
      .catch(err => {
        console.info(`\n> Status code found: ${err.status} | Error response found: '${JSON.stringify(err.response)}'\n`);
        foundStatusCode = err.status;
      });
    // Assert the HTTP Status Code:
    assert.include(allowedStatusCodes, foundStatusCode, `!AssertError: Route yields a bad status code! Got: ${foundStatusCode} | Expected: ${allowedStatusCodes}`);
  }); 

As opposed to always doing await browser.options.request.head(..., browser.options.baseUrl, etc.

---

❒ wdio-v4

All the wdio.conf.js file attributes (basically the config object name-value pairs) are also stored inside the browser.options object.

Thus, a more elegant approach to access your global config values from inside your tests would be as presented below:

> browser.options
{ port: 4444,
  protocol: 'http',
  waitforTimeout: 10000,
  waitforInterval: 500,
  coloredLogs: true,
  deprecationWarnings: false,
  logLevel: 'verbose',
  baseUrl: 'http://localhost',
  // ... etc ...
}

> browser.options.baseUrl
'http://localhost'

---

I'll go on a limb here and presume you want to read the baseUrl value from your wdio.config.js file, into your test.js file.

TL;DR: In your test.js file heading, add the following:

var config = require('<pathToWdioConfJS>/wdio.conf.js').config;

You can then access any wdio.config.js value via the config.<configOption>, in your case config.baseUrl.

---

Lastly, I would greatly recommend you read about exports and module exports.

WebdriverIO is built on NodeJS, so you will shoot yourself in the foot on the long run if you don't know how and when to use exports, module.exports, require, or the difference between them.

Use browser.options.baseUrl . If you use require, you're hard coding from that one file, which is fine, but you cannot do a wdio --baseUrl=http://myTestSite2.net to override the "global" baseUrl. Which you might want to do in multiple deployments in the future.