Nightwatch.js 1.3 New Features, Installation Guide, and Usage Examples

Nightwatch.js is an end‑to‑end testing framework built on Node.js that uses the W3C WebDriver protocol (formerly Selenium) to automate web applications. Version 1.3 adds several notable features:

BDD describe interface allowing tests to be written in BDD style without extra configuration.

New assertion assert.not (e.g., browser.assert.not.elementPresent('.not_present') ).

Additional APIs such as getElementProperty , domPropertyContains , domPropertyEquals , and .property .

New CLI options like --headless to run browsers in headless mode and --timeout to set a global retry timeout for failed assertions.

Installation and Startup

npm install nightwatch --save-dev

Install the required browser drivers:

npm install geckodriver --save-dev

npm install chromedriver --save-dev

Or install everything in one command:

npm i nightwatch geckodriver chromedriver --save-dev

Running a Demo Test

Nightwatch includes an example folder with sample tests. To run a basic test that searches for "nightwatch" on Ecosia.org and verifies the first result, execute:

./node_modules/.bin/nightwatch node_modules/nightwatch/examples/tests/ecosia.js

Windows users may need to run:

node node_modules/.bin/nightwatch

Manual Browser Driver Download

Nightwatch can manage WebDriver services automatically, but you can also download drivers manually:

ChromeDriver – download from ChromeDriver downloads . From version 75 onward, W3C protocol is default; to use JSONWire, set w3c: false in chromeOptions :

desiredCapabilities: {
browserName: 'chrome',
chromeOptions: { w3c: false }
}

GeckoDriver – download from GeckoDriver releases for Firefox.

Selenium Standalone Server – useful for managing multiple browsers and Selenium Grid; download the JAR from the Selenium release page. Note that Nightwatch no longer requires Selenium from version 1.0 onward.

Examples

The example folder demonstrates various Nightwatch features. Additional tests are available in the nightwatch-website-tests repository.

Nightwatch Unit Tests

Nightwatch tests are written using Mocha. To run the full test suite:

git clone https://github.com/nightwatchjs/nightwatch.git
cd nightwatch
npm install

npm test

To generate coverage reports:

npm run mocha-coverage

Open the generated coverage/index.html in a browser to view results.

Nightwatch Usage Example

An example repository ( nightwatch-e2e ) shows how to organize directories, configure global and local environments, and test the Nightwatch website itself.

Conclusion

If you need to perform web automation testing with JavaScript, Nightwatch.js is a highly recommended choice for writing reliable end‑to‑end test cases.