When cola.js fails, how do you find out what went wrong?
I don't have a minimal reproducible example, because that will likely take hours of debugging to make, and if I had it, then it wouldn't be an example of what I'm asking about. I'm hoping to hear of a way to quickly find out what's gone wrong. Presumably it's some bad data in my graph. But how can I tell what the bad data is?
The screenshot below illustrates a typical situation where something has gone wrong. Various NaNs are reported, there are a bunch of Uncaught TypeErrors, and an Assertion fails. There are a whole lot of local variables, all named with a single letter. Clicking and looking at them shows that a NaN got into a coordinate somewhere, as suggested by the previous error messages. It looks like sometime earlier, something got a null when it needed some sort of list-like data structure. How can I quickly find out what was the bad data that got into the graph?
I'm using cola.v3.min.js.
Details
I'm looking for a general approach to finding this kind of error, but here's the specific data that produced the errors in this example. Each line is the argument passed to cy.add() (as suggested by Stepan T.—and printing out everything passed to cy.add() might turn out to be the first step of the answer!).
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":1,"label":"Workspace","parent":[]},"position":{"x":45,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":2,"label":"Target(121)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":5,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":3,"label":"WantFullySourced","parent":[]},"position":{"x":50,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":4,"label":"Brick(120)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":10,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":5,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":55,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":6,"label":"Brick(1)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":15,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":7,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":60,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":8,"label":"Brick(2)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":20,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":9,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":65,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":10,"label":"Brick(3)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":25,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":11,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":70,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":12,"label":"Brick(4)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":30,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":13,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":75,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":14,"label":"Brick(5)","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":35,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":15,"label":"Avail","parent":[]},"position":{"x":80,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":16,"label":"NumericalRelationScout","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":40,"y":0}}
{"group":"nodes","data":{"id":17,"label":"OperandView","parent":[1]},"position":{"x":0,"y":0}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"2.member_of.1.members","source":2,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"4.member_of.1.members","source":4,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"6.member_of.1.members","source":6,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"8.member_of.1.members","source":8,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"10.member_of.1.members","source":10,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"12.member_of.1.members","source":12,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"14.member_of.1.members","source":14,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"16.member_of.1.members","source":16,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"17.member_of.1.members","source":17,"source_port_label":"member_of","target":1,"target_port_label":"members","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"3.taggees.2.tags","source":3,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":2,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"2.support_from.3.support_to","source":2,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":3,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"3.support_from.2.support_to","source":3,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":2,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"5.taggees.4.tags","source":5,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":4,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"4.support_from.5.support_to","source":4,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":5,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"7.taggees.6.tags","source":7,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":6,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"6.support_from.7.support_to","source":6,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":7,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"9.taggees.8.tags","source":9,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":8,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"8.support_from.9.support_to","source":8,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":9,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"11.taggees.10.tags","source":11,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":10,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"10.support_from.11.support_to","source":10,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":11,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"13.taggees.12.tags","source":13,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":12,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"12.support_from.13.support_to","source":12,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":13,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"15.taggees.14.tags","source":15,"source_port_label":"taggees","target":14,"target_port_label":"tags","weight":0.5}}
{"group":"edges","data":{"id":"14.support_from.15.support_to","source":14,"source_port_label":"support_from","target":15,"target_port_label":"support_to","weight":2}}
The object passed to cy.layout() had a circular structure, so JSON.stringify() wouldn't print it. Adding the getCircularReplacer() function recommended here seemed to crash the browser. But manually removing elements from the layout object exposed the error: in a relative alignment constraint (documented under API here), I had an offset of '0' where I needed a 0, i.e. a string where a number was needed.
OK, happily that problem is now fixed. That still leaves the original question: is there a faster way to find errors like that? (The static-typing advocates are surely cackling by now.)
I'm relatively new to Watir but can find no good documentation (examples) regarding how to check if an element exists. There are the API specs, of course, but these make precious little sense to me if I don't find an example.
I've tried both combinations but nothing seems to work...
if browser.image (:src "/media/images/icons/reviewertools/editreview.jpg").exists
then...
if browser.image (:src "/media/images/icons/reviewertools/editreview.jpg").exists?
then...
If anyone has a concrete suggestion as per how to implement this, please help! Thanks!
It seems you are missing a comma between parameters.
Should be
if browser.image(:src, "/media/images/icons/reviewertools/editreview.jpg").exists?
Also you can find this page useful in future to know what attributes are supported.
The code you posted should work just fine.
Edit: Oops, wrong. As Katmoon pointed out, there is a missing comma.
browser.image(:src "/media/images/icons/reviewertools/editreview.jpg").exists?
One problem you may get caught up in is if the browser variable you specified is actually an element that doesn't exist.
e.g.
b = Watir::IE.start(ipAddress)
b.frame(:name, "doesntExist).image(:src "/media/images/icons/reviewertools/editreview.jpg").exists?
The above code will throw a Watir::UnknownFrameException. You can get around this by first verifying the frame exists or by surrounding the code in a begin/rescue block.
Seems like you are using it correctly. Here is an old RDoc of Watir.
Does it not work because Watir cannot find it? Hard to tell because there is no source or link to the page that is being tested. I think that I only use image.exists?. In general, errors that come from when the image exists but is not found are:
The how is not compatible with the element type. There is a cheatsheet to help you see which object types can be found with different attributes here.
The what is not correct. You may have to play with that a little bit. Consider trying a regex string to match it such as browser.image(:src, /editreview.jpg/). As a last resort, maybe use element_by_xpath, but there are maintenance costs with that.
The location is not correct. Maybe the element is in a frame or something like that. browser.frame("detail").image(:src, /editreview.jpg/).
Try those, but please let me know what worked. One more thing, what are you checking for? If it's part of the test criteria, you can handle it that way. If you need to click on it, then forget the .exists? and just click on it. Ruby will let you know if it's not there. If you need it to be grace, learn about begin/rescue.
Good luck,
Dave