Smoke test every deploy

How to do it

Pick three to five checks that prove the release works for visitors. Load the home page and a key page, sign in with a test account, and search. Never buy, send email or change customer data. Run them from the deploy script after the health check passes, with a total time limit such as two minutes. Treat a failure like a failed health check.

Example

// smoke.spec.js, run with: BASE_URL=https://example.com npx playwright test smoke.spec.js
test('the product page shows a price', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/products/mug');
  await expect(page.getByText(/€\d/)).toBeVisible();
});

# smoke_test.py, run with: BASE_URL=https://example.com pytest smoke_test.py
def test_the_product_page_answers():
    response = httpx.get(f"{os.environ['BASE_URL']}/products/mug", timeout=10)
    assert response.status_code == 200
    assert "Add to cart" in response.text

How to check

Deploy a release with a broken key page to staging. The smoke tests fail, and the deploy script rolls back and exits with a code other than zero.