Automation Engineer Interview

A real-time e-commerce system used to evaluate test automation skills. Do not modify anything in apps/.

System Overview

Two web apps share a single backend. When a staff member updates a product's stock in the Inventory Manager, the Storefront reflects the change live — no page refresh required.

App	URL	Purpose
Backend Server	:3001	REST API + WebSocket event broadcaster
Inventory Manager	:5174	Internal tool for updating stock levels
Storefront	:5173	Customer-facing catalog with live availability badges

Inventory Manager (:5174) → POST /products/:id/stock → Server (:3001)
                                                              ↓
                                          WebSocket: stock-update event
                                                              ↓
                                                   Storefront (:5173)

See docs/products.md and docs/glossary.md for more detail.

Setup

Install dependencies for all apps and test suites:

cd apps/server && npm install && cd ../..
cd apps/storefront && npm install && cd ../..
cd apps/inventory && npm install && cd ../..
cd tests/inventory && npm install && npx playwright install chromium --with-deps && cd ../..
cd tests/web && npm install && npx playwright install chromium --with-deps && cd ../..

Running the apps

If ports are already in use from a previous session, clear them first:

lsof -ti:3001,5173,5174 | xargs kill -9 2>/dev/null; echo "ports clear"

Open three terminal tabs and run one command in each:

# Terminal 1
cd apps/server && npm start

# Terminal 2
cd apps/storefront && npm run dev

# Terminal 3
cd apps/inventory && npm run dev

Running the tests

With all three services running, open two more terminals:

# Terminal 4
cd tests/inventory && npx playwright test

# Terminal 5
cd tests/web && npx playwright test