[SteKoe]

Why

An analysis of the last three years of issues showed a recurring class of regressions that our unit tests can't catch: the assembled application breaks after a release. The UI doesn't load, the sidebar is empty, login/logout fails with a context path, or extension views lose their route. Examples: #4646, #4649, #4831, #4986, #5438, #3828/#3829, #5724, #4259, #4272.

Vitest tests components against mocked responses and JUnit tests the server. Nothing checks that server-rendered HTML, the built bundle, Spring Security, the context path and extensions work together. This PR adds a small, targeted Playwright smoke suite for exactly that. It is not meant to replace unit tests; business logic stays in Vitest/JUnit.

What

1. fix(ui): accessible names for icon-only controls

Several controls had no accessible name. Screen readers announced them as plain "button", and tests had to find them through the DOM structure (xpath=following-sibling::button, :scope > a > button, .hex).

Element	Before	After
Dropdown chevron of external views with a link	unnamed button	"Show entries of {label}" (new optional buttonLabel prop on sba-nav-dropdown)
User menu	unnamed button	"User menu of {name}"
Instance sidebar	unnamed <aside>	"Instance navigation"
Sidebar group toggles	unnamed button	"Expand/Collapse {group}" + aria-expanded
Wallboard hexagons	clickable <g> with no role	role="button", name "{app} ({status})", focusable, Enter/Space
iframe of sidebar links	title="Google"	URL of the embedded page
iframe of external views	no title	view label

New strings in en and de; other locales fall back to English. Unit tests added for the user menu name and the group toggles.

2. test(e2e): Playwright smoke suite (spring-boot-admin-e2e/)

• Starts the packaged servlet sample incl. custom UI in two scenarios:

  • insecure
  • secure: form login + context path /admin

• 65 tests, about 50 s:

  File	Covers
  shell.spec.ts	UI and server resources are delivered, applications list, wallboard → details, about page, deep link reload
  instance-views.spec.ts	sidebar offers exactly the expected views; one test per view, each waiting for view-specific content
  security.spec.ts	redirect to login, wrong password, login → logout → login, deep link after login
  extensions.spec.ts	custom views, external view dropdown, iframe views, sidebar links

• Every UI test fails on uncaught exceptions, console.error and missing scripts/stylesheets.

• Follows Playwright best practices:

  • session stored once via a setup project (storageState)
  • role/label-based locators only
  • external requests stubbed, no internet access
  • no fixed waits

• Separate workflow .github/workflows/e2e.yml. Not part of the Maven reactor, so ./mvnw install does not need browsers.

Found while writing the tests

• Wallboard: hex-mesh.vue renders <path d="M NaN,NaN …"> on first render (probably sideLength = 0 before the first layout pass). Currently ignored in tests/fixtures.ts → follow-up issue.
• /customSub in the custom-ui sample shows the parent view's content instead of "Hello from the submenu item". The test pins the current behaviour; is this intended?

Open questions for the team

• Should the E2E job be a required check? My suggestion: informational only for now, then review flakiness and value after ~3 releases (see the [Team discussion] Make tests less fragile #5274 discussion).
• The changed public component sba-nav-dropdown has a new optional prop buttonLabel. Worth a changelog line.
• Please try the wallboard keyboard navigation (Tab/Enter) by hand once.

How to test

./mvnw install -DskipTests -pl spring-boot-admin-samples/spring-boot-admin-sample-servlet -am
cd spring-boot-admin-e2e
npm ci && npx playwright install chromium
npm test        # or: npm run test:ui

Locally: full Vitest suite green (608 tests), lint without new warnings, E2E suite green incl. --repeat-each=3 (193 passed).