FTR Testing

Overview

FTR (Functional Test Runner) is Kibana's legacy framework for end-to-end functional tests. Tests are mocha-based (describe/it) using @kbn/expect, driven by config files that wire up Kibana + Elasticsearch servers, services, page objects, and security roles. Understanding FTR deeply is essential for maintaining existing tests and planning migrations.

Architecture

Provider context

Every FTR test file exports a provider function that receives FtrProviderContext:

export default ({ getService, getPageObjects, loadTestFile }: FtrProviderContext) => {
  // getService(name): returns a singleton service instance
  // getPageObjects(['name1', 'name2']): returns page object instances
  // loadTestFile(require.resolve('./path')): loads a sub-suite inside a describe block
};