mailto:jenkins,subject:test case1, case2 on http://staging.site.com

mailto:jenkins,subject:test case1, case2 on http://staging.site.com

So this is something we thought of

– email Jenkins
– to run one or more jobs
– against one of our deployed staging apps(given base_url)

We wrote a mail_watcher.rb, which periodically reads such emails, and rewrite <JENKINS_CHECKS_DIR>/<test_case_name>.checks files adding parameters to be passed on to the test case. In this case it is BASE_URL=. And all we know that we could make Jenkins

1. watch files getting modified
2. use file contents(key=val), as paramters further to be used or passed on to the job exec

Ohh, wait, I did not know how could Jenkins read parameters from a given key=val file and pass it on further. We actaully wrote another shell script which runs as the first step of every job and reads the testcase_name.checks file and set ENV variables like for example BASE_URL.

So in case of subject:test testcase1 on http://mysite.com

– mail watcher will write testcase1.checks file with BASE_URL=http://mysite.com
– shell script will set ENV variable BASE_URL=http://mysite.com

Following is the mail watcher that we simply run to be able to get Jenkins job triggered.

	require 'net/imap'
	class MailWatcher
	Server = 'imap.gmail.com'
	Username = ''
	Password = ''
	Folder = 'INBOX'
	PollingInterval = 60
	CheckFileLocation = "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/../../tmp/checks/"
	def fetch
	@imap = Net::IMAP.new Server, 993, true
	@imap.login Username, Password
	@imap.select Folder
	@imap.search(["NOT", "SEEN"]).each do |message_id|
	env = @imap.fetch(message_id, "ENVELOPE")[0].attr["ENVELOPE"]
	@subject = env.subject
	return unless @subject.match(/^test .+/)
	test_cases.each do |test_case_name|
	File.open("#{CheckFileLocation}#{test_case_name}.check",'w') { |file| file.puts base_url }
	end
	mark_delete message_id
	end
	@imap.logout
	@imap.disconnect
	end
	def start_watching
	while(1) do
	fetch
	sleep PollingInterval
	end
	end
	def base_url
	@base_url ||= "base_url=#{@subject.match(/ on (https?\:\/\/[a-z\.]+)$/)[1]}" rescue 'base_url='
	end
	def test_cases
	@test_cases = @subject.split(' on http').first[5..-1].strip.split(',').collect{ |test_case| test_case.strip.gsub(' ','_')}
	end
	def mark_delete message_id
	@imap.store(message_id, "+FLAGS", [:Seen])
	@imap.store(message_id, "+FLAGS", [:Deleted])
	end
	end
	Process.daemon(true)
	MailWatcher.new.start_watching

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mail_watcher.rb

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Now any of us teammates, can anytime send an email and get a test case executed. In addition we are as well generating a detailed report email for each job-run that gets published on a Google group. We do have our own custom, half-baked, reporting mechanism(ruby code), which we want to compile the job-execution-report email for each testcase/job executed.

Example reports

subject: testcase1 failed.
body: <Jenkins console output>

subject: rspec 231 passed, 2 failed.
body: <Jenkins console output>