Upgrade to the latest version of Cypress

[FK78]

Resolves https://github.com/bbc/simorgh-infrastructure/issues/837

Overall change:
Upgrade to the latest version of Cypress

Code changes:

• Convert the string timestamp into a number to meet the parameter requirements for Chai.
• Bump Cypress from 3.8.1 to 4.4.0

---

• I have assigned myself to this PR and the corresponding issues
• I have added labels to this PR for the relevant pod(s) affected by these changes
• I have assigned this PR to the Simorgh project

Testing:

• Automated (jest and/or cypress) tests added (for new features) or updated (for existing features)
• If necessary, I have run the local E2E non-smoke tests relevant to my changes (CYPRESS_APP_ENV=local CYPRESS_SMOKE=false npm run test:e2e:interactive)
• This PR requires manual testing

[FK78]

@jblaut @FK78 did either of you get any further with this? Let me know if you need a hand, would love to get Cypress updated as soon as possible.

Not currently looking into the issue as I am waiting on space to become available on CodeBuild, but last time I ran the job we had 24 tests fail for a single service only, test time did not change significantly.

[j-pendlebury]

I'm still looking into this in between other things but here's what I got so far.

I ran the front page e2e's on version 3.8.1 (current) and 4.3.0 (latest version available), with CYPRESS_APP_ENV=local CYPRESS_SMOKE=false npm run test:e2e:interactive and here are the results:

3.8.1

Run 1: 3413s => 57min
Run 2: 3477s => 58min
Run 3: 3449s => 57min

Average: (3413 + 3477 + 3449)/3 = 3446.333333333 => 3446s => 57min

4.3.0

Run 1: 4217s => 1 hour 10 min
Run 2: 4223s => 1 hour 10 min
Run 3: 4368s => 1 hours 13 min

Average: (4217 + 4223 + 4368)/3 = 4269.333333333 => 4269s => 1 hour 11min

So difference of about 14 minutes for front page tests.

This was all done locally, so tests ran slower than on CodeBuild.

Currently the front page tests take about 25 minutes (on TEST, not LIVE) on CodeBuild, so with version 4.3.0, front page tests would take roughly 32 minutes.

Here are some predictions for how long the tests will take with Cypress@4.3.0 on CodeBuild based on how long they run for now:

Skipped tests which take seconds or milliseconds to run (e.g. errorPage tests)

Also found these two issues:

• Upgrade to Cypress 3.7.0 makes everything 10 times slower!! cypress-io/cypress#5824
• Cypress 4.0.1 - Electron is 1.5x slower in a test spec cypress-io/cypress#6388

which shows we're not the only ones experiencing this issue

[amywalkerdev]

Thanks for the analysis Jamie, I'm happy to update cypress knowing it will add time to our runs for the moment, then we can look to streamline and improve our tests after.

[jamesdonoh]

+1 thanks Jamie and Fahad. I think we should push ahead with this too.