📸 SnapshotTesting

Delightful Swift snapshot testing.

Once installed, no additional configuration is required. You can import the SnapshotTesting module and call the assertSnapshot function.

import SnapshotTesting
import XCTest

class MyViewControllerTests: XCTestCase {
  func testMyViewController() {
    let vc = MyViewController()

    assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image)
  }
}

When an assertion first runs, a snapshot is automatically recorded to disk and the test will fail, printing out the file path of any newly-recorded reference.

❌ failed - No reference was found on disk. Automatically recorded snapshot: …

open "…/MyAppTests/__Snapshots__/MyViewControllerTests/testMyViewController.png"

Re-run "testMyViewController" to test against the newly-recorded snapshot.

Repeat test runs will load this reference and compare it with the runtime value. If they don't match, the test will fail and describe the difference. Failures can be inspected from Xcode's Report Navigator or by inspecting the file URLs of the failure.

You can record a new reference by setting the record parameter to true on the assertion or setting isRecording globally.

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image, record: true)

// or globally

isRecording = true
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image)

While most snapshot testing libraries in the Swift community are limited to UIImages of UIViews, SnapshotTesting can work with any format of any value on any Swift platform!

The assertSnapshot function accepts a value and any snapshot strategy that value supports. This means that a view or view controller can be tested against an image representation and against a textual representation of its properties and subview hierarchy.

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image)
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .recursiveDescription)

View testing is highly configurable. You can override trait collections (for specific size classes and content size categories) and generate device-agnostic snapshots, all from a single simulator.

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image(on: .iPhoneSe))
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .recursiveDescription(on: .iPhoneSe))

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image(on: .iPhoneSe(.landscape)))
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .recursiveDescription(on: .iPhoneSe(.landscape)))

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image(on: .iPhoneX))
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .recursiveDescription(on: .iPhoneX))

assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .image(on: .iPadMini(.portrait)))
assertSnapshot(of: vc, as: .recursiveDescription(on: .iPadMini(.portrait)))

Warning Snapshots must be compared using the exact same simulator that originally took the reference to avoid discrepancies between images.

Better yet, SnapshotTesting isn't limited to views and view controllers! There are a number of available snapshot strategies to choose from.

For example, you can snapshot test URL requests (e.g., those that your API client prepares).

assertSnapshot(of: urlRequest, as: .raw)
// POST http://localhost:8080/account
// Cookie: pf_session={"userId":"1"}
//
// email=blob%40pointfree.co&name=Blob

And you can snapshot test Encodable values against their JSON and property list representations.

assertSnapshot(of: user, as: .json)
// {
//   "bio" : "Blobbed around the world.",
//   "id" : 1,
//   "name" : "Blobby"
// }

assertSnapshot(of: user, as: .plist)
// <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
// <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
//  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
// <plist version="1.0">
// <dict>
//   <key>bio</key>
//   <string>Blobbed around the world.</string>
//   <key>id</key>
//   <integer>1</integer>
//   <key>name</key>
//   <string>Blobby</string>
// </dict>
// </plist>

In fact, any value can be snapshot-tested by default using its mirror!

assertSnapshot(of: user, as: .dump)
// ▿ User
//   - bio: "Blobbed around the world."
//   - id: 1
//   - name: "Blobby"

If your data can be represented as an image, text, or data, you can write a snapshot test for it!

The latest documentation is available here.

Warning By default, Xcode will try to add the SnapshotTesting package to your project's main application/framework target. Please ensure that SnapshotTesting is added to a test target instead, as documented in the last step, below.

1. From the File menu, navigate through Swift Packages and select Add Package Dependency….
2. Enter package repository URL: https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing.
3. Confirm the version and let Xcode resolve the package.
4. On the final dialog, update SnapshotTesting's Add to Target column to a test target that will contain snapshot tests (if you have more than one test target, you can later add SnapshotTesting to them by manually linking the library in its build phase).

If you want to use SnapshotTesting in any other project that uses SwiftPM, add the package as a dependency in Package.swift:

dependencies: [
  .package(
    url: "https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing",
    from: "1.12.0"
  ),
]

Next, add SnapshotTesting as a dependency of your test target:

targets: [
  .target(name: "MyApp"),
  .testTarget(
    name: "MyAppTests",
    dependencies: [
      "MyApp",
      .product(name: "SnapshotTesting", package: "swift-snapshot-testing"),
    ]
  )
]

• Dozens of snapshot strategies. Snapshot testing isn't just for UIViews and CALayers. Write snapshots against any value.
• Write your own snapshot strategies. If you can convert it to an image, string, data, or your own diffable format, you can snapshot test it! Build your own snapshot strategies from scratch or transform existing ones.
• No configuration required. Don't fuss with scheme settings and environment variables. Snapshots are automatically saved alongside your tests.
• More hands-off. New snapshots are recorded whether isRecording mode is true or not.
• Subclass-free. Assert from any XCTest case or Quick spec.
• Device-agnostic snapshots. Render views and view controllers for specific devices and trait collections from a single simulator.
• First-class Xcode support. Image differences are captured as XCTest attachments. Text differences are rendered in inline error messages.
• Supports any platform that supports Swift. Write snapshot tests for iOS, Linux, macOS, tvOS and visionOS.
• SceneKit, SpriteKit, and WebKit support. Most snapshot testing libraries don't support these view subclasses.
• Codable support. Snapshot encodable data structures into their JSON and property list representations.
• Custom diff tool integration. Configure failure messages to print diff commands for Kaleidoscope (or your diff tool of choice).

  SnapshotTesting.diffTool = "ksdiff"

• AccessibilitySnapshot adds easy regression testing for iOS accessibility.

• AccessibilitySnapshotColorBlindness adds snapshot strategies for color blindness simulation on iOS views, view controllers and images.

• GRDBSnapshotTesting adds snapshot strategy for testing SQLite database migrations made with GRDB.

• Nimble-SnapshotTesting adds Nimble matchers for SnapshotTesting to be used by Swift Package Manager.

• Prefire generating Snapshot Tests via Swift Package Plugins using SwiftUI Preview

• PreviewSnapshots share View configurations between SwiftUI Previews and snapshot tests and generate several snapshots with a single test assertion.

• swift-html is a Swift DSL for type-safe, extensible, and transformable HTML documents and includes an HtmlSnapshotTesting module to snapshot test its HTML documents.

• swift-snapshot-testing-nimble adds Nimble matchers for SnapshotTesting.

• swift-snapshot-testing-stitch adds the ability to stitch multiple UIView's or UIViewController's together in a single test.

• SnapshotTestingDump Adds support to use swift-custom-dump by using customDump strategy for Any

• SnapshotTestingHEIC adds image support using the HEIC storage format which reduces file sizes in comparison to PNG.

• SnapshotVision adds snapshot strategy for text recognition on views and images. Uses Apples Vision framework.

Have you written your own SnapshotTesting plug-in? Add it here and submit a pull request!

• iOSSnapshotTestCase helped introduce screen shot testing to a broad audience in the iOS community. Experience with it inspired the creation of this library.

• Jest brought generalized snapshot testing to the JavaScript community with a polished user experience. Several features of this library (diffing, automatically capturing new snapshots) were directly influenced.

SnapshotTesting was designed with witness-oriented programming.

This concept (and more) are explored thoroughly in a series of episodes on Point-Free, a video series exploring functional programming and Swift hosted by Brandon Williams and Stephen Celis.

Witness-oriented programming and the design of this library was explored in the following Point-Free episodes:

• Episode 33: Protocol Witnesses: Part 1
• Episode 34: Protocol Witnesses: Part 2
• Episode 35: Advanced Protocol Witnesses: Part 1
• Episode 36: Advanced Protocol Witnesses: Part 2
• Episode 37: Protocol-Oriented Library Design: Part 1
• Episode 38: Protocol-Oriented Library Design: Part 2
• Episode 39: Witness-Oriented Library Design
• Episode 40: Async Functional Refactoring
• Episode 41: A Tour of Snapshot Testing 🆓

This library is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.