Improving the execution time of CI pipelines

Executing a large number of tests, especially integration tests, takes a lot of time. For instance, the pipeline of one of our projects for each Pull Request previously took nearly 30 minutes, including over 1 thousand test cases. This article guides you through several good techniques that we have discovered and applied to improve the time-consuming process.

Parallel stages

Analyze the current phases in your pipeline and categorize them in parallel. For example, we can separate the build and verify code of Node.js and Maven modules simultaneously in our Jenkins pipelines. Please mind using the setting failFast whether you want to abort the pipeline immediately.

Parallel test execution

If you use Maven, the plugin maven-failsafe-plugin is used to execute integration tests during phases integration-test and verify the build lifecycle. It allows us to execute tests in parallel. There are many settings related to parallel test execution, so make sure to configure them correctly for your environment. For example, we can execute tests in parallel using the classes mode and set threadCount=7 for the Jenkins Agent with 8 CPU cores.

Application profiles

There are certain integration tests that don't require the use of a database. These tests focus on scenarios like error handling, authentication filters, or loading configuration. For example, initializing the database with Testcontainers is time-consuming. If you use Spring Boot, you can utilize a different profile and use the H2 in-memory database for these tests. The test class will be annotated with the @ActiveProfiles annotation to run with the specified profile.

Comments

Junit - Test fails on French or German string assertion

In my previous post about building a regex to check a text without special characters but allow German and French . I met a problem that the unit test works fine on my machine using Eclipse, but it was fail when running on Jenkins' build job. Here is my test: @Test public void shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters(){ String source = "ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ"; assertFalse(SpecialCharactersUtils.isExistSpecialCharater(source)); } Production code: public static boolean isExistNotAllowedCharacters(String source){ Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z_0-9_ÄäÖöÜüß áÁàÀâÂéÉèÈêÊîÎçÇ]*$"); Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(source); return !matcher.matches(); } The result likes the following: Failed tests: SpecialCharactersUtilsTest.shouldAllowFrenchAndGermanCharacters:32 null A guy from stackoverflow.com says: "This is probably due to the default encoding used for your Java source files. The ö in the string literal in the J...

How to convert time between timezone in Java, Primefaces?

I use the calendar Primefaces component with timeOnly and timeZone attributes for using only hour format (HH:mm). Like this: <p:calendar id="xabsOvertimeTimeFrom" pattern="HH:mm" timeOnly="true" value="#{data.dateFrom}" timeZone="#{data.timeZone}"/> We can convert the value of #{data.dateFrom} from GMT/UTC time zone to local, conversely, from local time zone to GMT/UTC time zone. Here is my functions: package vn.nvanhuong.timezoneconverter; import java.text.ParseException; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; import java.util.Calendar; import java.util.Date; import java.util.TimeZone; public class TimeZoneConverter { /** * convert a date with hour format (HH:mm) from local time zone to UTC time zone */ public static Date convertHourToUTCTimeZone(Date inputDate) throws ParseException { if(inputDate == null){ return null; } Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(); calendar.setTime(inputDate); int ...

4 Remarkable Notes for JSF Apps Using HTML5

In the previous post , I've already shared with you how my team consults clients by using a HTML prototype. This post is about the used technologies for reusing the provided HTML template and communicating with backend. What is the issue when using HTML elements with Primefaces components? Primefaces is a great extension for developing JSF web apps. However, it is really frustrating in case we have to make it work with an existing HTML template. Why? - Primefaces has its own theme for styling. - Primefaces changes the HTML structure. Therefore, that would be a huge effort to use the Primefaces' components to replicate the elements of the HTML template; especially it is impossible for images drawing by " canvas " tag. That requires us to find a better approach. Since Java EE 7 (introducing JSF 2.2 included), it supports to use HTML5 elements . The idea is that JSF components don't effect the style and HTML structure, so we can easily reuse the provided HTM...

AngularJS - Build a custom validation directive for using multiple emails in textarea

AngularJS already supports the built-in validation with text input with type email. Something simple likes the following: <input name="input" ng-model="email.text" required="" type="email" /> <span class="error" ng-show="myForm.input.$error.email"> Not valid email!</span> However, I used a text area and I wanted to enter some email addresses that's saparated by a comma (,). I had a short research and it looked like AngualarJS has not supported this functionality so far. Therefore, I needed to build a custom directive that I could add my own validation functions. My validation was done only on client side, so I used the $validators object. Note that, there is the $asyncValidators object which handles asynchronous validation, such as making an $http request to the backend. This is just my implementation on my project. In order to understand that, I supposed you already had experiences with ...

Styling Sort Icons Using Font Awesome for Primefaces' Data Table

So far, Primefaces has used image sprites for displaying the sort icons. This leads to a problem if we want to make a different style for these icons; for example, I would make the icon "arrow up" more blurry at the first time the table loading because I want to highlight the icon "arrow down". I found a way that I can replace these icons with Font Awesome icons. We will use "CSS Pseudo-classes" to achieve it. The hardest thing here is that we should handle displaying icons in different cases. There is a case both "arrow up" and "arrow down" showing and other case is only one of these icons is shown. .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s { background-image: none; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 1.1666em; position: relative; } .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s:not(.ui-icon-triangle-1-s)::before { content: "\f106"; font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: ...

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