Using Test Emails

When creating tests, you can send an email to an @e.rainforestqa.com address. This feature is useful for use cases such as authorization and confirmation. Moreover, you can also use the detailed information Rainforest captures to help with debugging.

Test Sending an Email from Your App to the User

Use {{random.inbox}} with {{random.email}} to test email verification.

{{random.email}}. This placeholder gives each of your tests a globally unique email address. It’s great for testing signup flows. Any email sent to {{random.email}} appears in its corresponding {{random.inbox}}.

{{random.inbox}}. This is a temporary, web-based email inbox similar to Mailinator.

Review delivery by performing the following steps:

1. Navigate to e.rainforestqa.com/[username].
   Example: if an email was sent to [email protected], go to e.rainforestqa.com/joe.user.
2. The page displays a list of all emails sent to the address in the last 30 days.
3. Choose the email you want to investigate by clicking the Open Email button.
4. The page displays detailed information, including timestamped events.

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Pro Tip

If the username is randomly generated by {{random.email}} or some other variable:

1. Navigate to the test result you want to review.
2. Find the username.
3. Append a “/” and the username to the base URL: e.rainforestqa.com/[username].

Test Replying to an Email

Use the placeholder {{random.email}} wherever a step is required to enter an email address in your app. Then, when you want to check whether the email was successfully sent, create a step to navigate to {{random.inbox}} and confirm the email is there.

Our Tester Community can reply once to an email in the inbox. Use an instruction such as the following:
“Reply to the email with the message ‘Hello’.”

Emails older than 30 days are automatically deleted. You can write steps to clear the inbox. To do so, navigate to {{random.inbox}} and then click the Clear Inbox button.

Customizing Rainforest Email Addresses

Some testing scenarios might require the use of emails that you create, this is possible using our inbox. To create a customized email please ensure it uses the below guidelines

• The email must end in e.rainforestqa.com.
• The email can not be over 254 characters.
• The email can only contain the following: Letters A-Z, Numbers 0-9, and Special Characters . _ -

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Customized Email Example

If you are testing a new login feature and want specific emails to track the flow: [email protected]

Combine Placeholders to Create Unique Strings

Use test data to inject dynamic information into your test steps. Rainforest provides built-in test data, such as {{random.address_zip5}}, which populates a 5-digit zip code. You can create custom data to be used to meet the needs of various situations. Following are a few special use cases.

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Concatenation Example 1

Combine {{random.address_zip5}} with {{random.first_name}} to produce {{random.address_zip5}}{{random.first_name}}

Result: “19345Alice”

Concatenate two or more different test data placeholders. This is useful when you want to create unique names for testing things such as sign-up pages. Doing so helps to ensure the test has a unique value to work with.

Create Multiple Unique Email Addresses

Some workflows require testing multiple email addresses in a test. For example, {{random.email}}, which is typically used to provide a test with a randomly generated email, provides a single email. However, for workflows requiring 2 or more unique email addresses, you can create a second email by combining two or more placeholders.

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Concatenation Example 2

Combine {{random.first_name}}, “_”, {{random.password}}, and “@e.rainforestqa.com” to produce {{random.first_name}}_{{random.password}}@e.rainforestqa.com.

Result: “[email protected]”

Instruct the test to access the inbox using the URL, which in this case is:
http://e.rainforestqa.com/Rockman_y2ehSMZ6

Append characters to create additional random emails. For example, {{random.first_name}}_{{random.password}}[email protected] and {{random.first_name}}_{{random.password}}[email protected].

Result: Rockman_y2ehSMZ61@e.rainforestqa.com and Rockman_y2ehSMZ62@e.rainforestqa.com, respectively.

For the inboxes use
http://e.rainforestqa.com/{{random.first_name}}_{{random.password}}1 and http://e.rainforestqa.com/{{random.first_name}}_{{random.password}}2.

Instruct the test to access the inboxes using the URLs, which in these examples will be:
http://e.rainforestqa.com/Rockman_y2ehSMZ61 and http://e.rainforestqa.com/Rockman_y2ehSMZ62.

If you have any questions, reach out to us at [email protected].