Cypress async form validation - how to capture (possibly) quick state changes - cypress

I have some async form validation code that I'd like to put under test using Cypress. The code is pretty simple -
on user input, enter async validation UI state (or stay in that state if there are previous validation requests that haven't been responded to)
send a request to the server
receive a response
if there are no pending requests, leave async validation UI state
Step 1 is the part I want to test. Right now, this means checking if some element has been assigned some class -- but the state changes can happen very fast, and most of the time (not always!) Cypress times out waiting for something that has ALREADY happened (in other words, step 4 has already occurred by the time we get around to seeing if step 1 happened).
So the failing test looks like:
cy.get("#some-input").type("...");
cy.get("#some-target-element").should("have.class", "class-to-check-for");
Usually, by the time Cypress gets to the second line, step 4 has already ran and the test fails. Is there a common pattern I should know about to solve this? I would naturally prefer not to have change the code under test.
Edit 1:
I'm not certain that I've 100% solved the "race" condition here, but if I use the underlying native elements (discarding the jQuery abstraction), I haven't had a failure yet.
So, changing:
cy.get("#some-input").type("...")
to:
cy.get("#some-input").then(jQueryObj => {
let nativeElement = jQueryObj[0];
nativeElement.value = "...";
nativeElement.dispatchEvent(new Event("input")); // make sure the app knows this element changed
});
And then running Cypress' checks for what classes have / haven't been added has been effective.

You can stub the server request that happens during form validation - and slow it down, see delay parameter https://docs.cypress.io/api/commands/route.html#Use-delays-for-responses
While the request is delayed, your app's validation UI is showing, you can validate it and then once the request finishes, check if the UI goes away.

Related

Cypress not retrying assertion

My Cypress test is acting inconsistently due to an assertion set on header text. Here is my code:
cy.get('.heading-large').should('contain', 'dashboard') // passes
cy.contains('View details').first().click()
cy.get('.heading-large').should('contain', 'Registration details') // sometimes fails
If it fails, it is because the heading still contains 'dashboard' - Cypress appears not to have retried but gives error Timed out retrying: expected '<h1.heading-large>' to contain 'Registration details'
From reading about Cypress retry-ability, my understanding is that the should assertion should keep trying until timeout, which is set as "defaultCommandTimeout" : 5000. This feels true even if I have an element with the same identifier across two pages. There are no major performance issues with the app I'm testing.
The test seems more likely to fail if I am not watching the window and this issue looks like a possible cause.
Can anyone help determine: is there an issue with my test or Cypress, and how might I improve the test? I'm using Cypress 5.1.0 and Chrome 85 on MacOS Catalina.
It is failing occasionally because the request that fills the header with information has not resolved by the time the timeout has been reached.
You can solve this by setting up a route with a route alias to wait for that exact response from the request to resolve before you proceed with the click.
In other words, When you click(), there is a request sent that grabs the information you want to check for in the next get(). This response for this request has sometimes not resolved by the time your get() reaches timeout. You could increase the timeout but that's not recommended and not good practice here. Instead, wait for that specific response with route & route alias. If you do that, in every case, the last get() won't get called until the information it is looking for has been resolved.
I don't know your request but it would work something like this:
// setup the route and alias
cy.server()
cy.route("/youRequestUrlHere").as("myLovelyAlias")
// first get
cy.get('.heading-large').should('contain', 'dashboard')
// this click fires the request url from route() above
cy.contains('View details').first().click()
// wait for route to resolve using route alias
cy.wait("#myLovelyAlias").then((response) => {
// next get called after response resolves
cy.get('.heading-large').should('contain', 'Registration details')
}
Reference:
Route & alias
Route
Best Practice - get()
Network Request - wait()
edit:
As mentioned above, you could also cheat and set the defaultCommandTimeout to a higher number but that is not recommended because you could still run into cases where the response resolution takes longer than the timeout you've set. The route/wait pattern is the better, more stable approach.
Just in case you want to know how its done though, you would change your get() to something like:
cy.get('.heading-large', {defaultCommandTimeout: 60000}).should('contain', 'Registration details')
Again, other way would be much better.
Reference:
Cypress configuration
It looks like we need to wait for the Cypress bug "Some tests flake only if test runner's browser loses focus (or run headlessly)" to be fixed. This is because I have tried the alternative, helpful answers but am consistently facing the original issue when the window is out of focus.
Thank you to those who have answered and commented.

Non helpfull error message Calabash with page objects pattern

I'm currently using Calabash framework to automate functional testing for a native Android and IOS application. During my time studying it, I stumbled upon this example project from Xamarin that uses page objects design pattern which I find to be much better to organize the code in a Selenium fashion.
I have made a few adjustments to the original project, adding a file called page_utils.rb in the support directory of the calabash project structure. This file has this method:
def change_page(next_page)
sleep 2
puts "current page is #{current_page_name} changing to #{next_page}"
#current_page = page(next_page).await(PAGE_TRANSITION_PARAMETERS)
sleep 1
capture_screenshot
#current_page.assert_info_present
end
So in my custom steps implementation, when I want to change the page, I trigger the event that changes the page in the UI and update the reference for Calabash calling this method, in example:
#current_page.click_to_home_page
change_page(HomePage)
PAGE_TRANSITION_PARAMETERS is a hash with parameters such as timeout:
PAGE_TRANSITION_PARAMETERS = {
timeout: 10,
screenshot_on_error: true
}
Just so happens to be that whenever I have a timeout waiting for any element in any screen during a test run, I get a generic error message such as:
Timeout waiting for elements: * id:'btn_ok' (Calabash::Android::WaitHelpers::WaitError)
./features/support/utils/page_utils.rb:14:in `change_page'
./features/step_definitions/login_steps.rb:49:in `/^I enter my valid credentials$/'
features/04_support_and_settings.feature:9:in `And I enter my valid credentials'
btn_ok is the id defined for the trait of the first screen in my application, I don't understand why this keeps popping up even in steps ahead of that screen, masking the real problem.
Can anyone help getting rid of this annoyance? Makes really hard debugging test failures, specially on the test cloud.
welcome to Calabash!
As you might be aware, you'll get a Timeout waiting for elements: exception when you attempt to query/wait for an element which can't be found on the screen. When you call page.await(opts), it is actually calling wait_for_elements_exist([trait], opts), which means in your case that after 10 seconds of waiting, the view with id btn_ok can't be found on the screen.
What is assert_info_present ? Does it call wait_for_element_exists or something similar? More importantly, what method is actually being called in page_utils.rb:14 ?
And does your app actually return to the home screen when you invoke click_to_home_page ?
Unfortunately it's difficult to diagnose the issue without some more info, but I'll throw out a few suggestions:
My first guess without seeing your application or your step definitions is that #current_page.click_to_home_page is taking longer than 10 seconds to actually bring the home page back. If that's the case, simply try increasing the timeout (or remove it altogether, since the default is 30 seconds. See source).
My second guess is that the element with id btn_ok is not actually visible on screen when your app returns to the home screen. If that's the case, you could try changing the trait definition from * id:'btn_ok' to all * id:'btn_ok' (the all operator will include views that aren't actually visible on screen). Again, I have no idea what your app looks like so it's hard to say.
My third guess is it's something related to assert_info_present, but it's hard to say without seeing the step defs.
On an unrelated note, I apologize if our sample code is a bit outdated, but at the time of writing we generally don't encourage the use of #current_page to keep track of a page. Calabash was written in a more or less stateless manner and we generally encourage step definitions to avoid using state wherever possible.
Hope this helps! Best of luck.

Basic Sidekiq Questions about Idempotency and functions

I'm using Sidekiq to perform some heavy processing in the background. I looked online but couldn't find the answers to the following questions. I am using:
Class.delay.use_method(listing_id)
And then, inside the class, I have a
self.use_method(listing_id)
listing = Listing.find_by_id listing_id
UserMailer.send_mail(listing)
Class.call_example_function()
Two questions:
How do I make this function idempotent for the UserMailer sendmail? In other words, in case the delayed method runs twice, how do I make sure that it only sends the mail once? Would wrapping it in something like this work?
mail_sent = false
if !mail_sent
UserMailer.send_mail(listing)
mail_sent = true
end
I'm guessing not since the function is tried again and then mail_sent is set to false for the second run through. So how do I make it so that UserMailer is only run once.
Are functions called within the delayed async method also asynchronous? In other words, is Class.call_example_function() executed asynchronously (not part of the response / request cycle?) If not, should I use Class.delay.call_example_function()
Overall, just getting familiar with Sidekiq so any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
I'm coming into this late, but having been around the loop and had this StackOverflow entry appearing prominently via Google, it needs clarification.
The issue of idempotency and the issue of unique jobs are not the same thing. The 'unique' gems look at the parameters of job at the point it is about to be processed. If they find that there was another job with the same parameters which had been submitted within some expiry time window then the job is not actually processed.
The gems are literally what they say they are; they consider whether an enqueued job is unique or not within a certain time window. They do not interfere with the retry mechanism. In the case of the O.P.'s question, the e-mail would still get sent twice if Class.call_example_function() threw an error thus causing a job retry, but the previous line of code had successfully sent the e-mail.
Aside: The sidekiq-unique-jobs gem mentioned in another answer has not been updated for Sidekiq 3 at the time of writing. An alternative is sidekiq-middleware which does much the same thing, but has been updated.
https://github.com/krasnoukhov/sidekiq-middleware
https://github.com/mhenrixon/sidekiq-unique-jobs (as previously mentioned)
There are numerous possible solutions to the O.P.'s email problem and the correct one is something that only the O.P. can assess in the context of their application and execution environment. One would be: If the e-mail is only going to be sent once ("Congratulations, you've signed up!") then a simple flag on the User model wrapped in a transaction should do the trick. Assuming a class User accessible as an association through the Listing via listing.user, and adding in a boolean flag mail_sent to the User model (with migration), then:
listing = Listing.find_by_id(listing_id)
unless listing.user.mail_sent?
User.transaction do
listing.user.mail_sent = true
listing.user.save!
UserMailer.send_mail(listing)
end
end
Class.call_example_function()
...so that if the user mailer throws an exception, the transaction is rolled back and the change to the user's flag setting is undone. If the "call_example_function" code throws an exception, then the job fails and will be retried later, but the user's "e-mail sent" flag was successfully saved on the first try so the e-mail won't be resent.
Regarding idempotency, you can use https://github.com/mhenrixon/sidekiq-unique-jobs gem:
All that is required is that you specifically set the sidekiq option
for unique to true like below:
sidekiq_options unique: true
For jobs scheduled in the future it is possible to set for how long
the job should be unique. The job will be unique for the number of
seconds configured or until the job has been completed.
*If you want the unique job to stick around even after it has been successfully processed then just set the unique_unlock_order to
anything except :before_yield or :after_yield (unique_unlock_order =
:never)
I'm not sure I understand the second part of the question - when you delay a method call, the whole method call is deferred to the sidekiq process. If by 'response / request cycle' you mean that you are running a web server, and you call delay from there, so all the calls within the use_method are called from the sidekiq process, and hence outside of that cycle. They are called synchronously relative to each other though...

Invoking a spring action repeatedly without user interaction

I Have a requirement like below :
Get invoked a particular action repeatedly without user interaction.For example, I have a message status page which displayed JMS message status.Message status can be changed by a number of application components.What I wanted is, my status UI has to pick latest message status.I need the action which displays status UI to be called repeatedly in an interval of 5 seconds or so, so that UI will get displayed with latest status.
How can I achieve this in spring.Is it something,Polling an action?
Any help highly appreciated
The easiest thing to do is to ask the server every few seconds using JavaScript and AJAX (pseudo-code using jquery):
function askServerForStatus() {
$.getJSON('/your-app/jms-status', function(response) {
$('#status').text(response.status);
}
}
setInterval(askServerForStatus, 5000); //every 5 seconds
Very simple example, it asks Spring MVC controllers mapped to /jms-status and expects the following JSON response:
{"status": "Processing..."}
Consider using setTimeout().
More general, reliable and robust approach is to use websockets, servlet-3.0 asynchronous support or comet. Also have a look at atmosphere.

How do you test an Ajax application with Selenium and keep it stable?

Our team has been testing our application with Selenium as it's heavily JavaScript driven we've always had issues with tests occasionally failing. As the number of tests has increased the probability of at least one two tests failing in a complete run has become a certainty.
What we recently figured out is that we probably have a race condition where selenium will click links before the initialization JavaScript has had a chance to attach event handlers to the element that is being clicked. Of course at this point the effects we're looking for don't happen and we get a failing test.
For the time being we've added a slight delay before clicks to give the initialization JavaScript code time to finish, this is obviously a bit hackish, adds time to overall test execution, and doesn't guarantee tests won't still fail so we're looking for a better solution.
The best idea we've come up with so far is to inject a hidden element into the DOM that Selenium can wait for, before firing the click event to know that it's ready. This will be a lot of extra overhead in terms of developer time when we're working our asynchronous events, removing and adding the element. Also it adds extra stuff to our pages that really isn't necessary for the application.
Does anyone have any better strategies? What have you done to effectively solve this problem?
We moved to Selenium 2 (WebDriver) and are using Page Objects pattern with PageFactory/AjaxElementLocatorFactory - an example of this is here
I did exactly like you : add some delay and wait for some elements to be present on the page. And I'm perfectly fine with it. Maybe switching to Webdriver / selenium 2.0 would help though. Test execution can be trimmed down if you work with an in-memory database or sharing the same selenium/selenium server between tests, or even with parallelization (easy with TestNG for instance).
Have you tried the waitForElementPresent command, and then make it click ?
To eliminate race conditions use Selenium's runScript(String initCondition) combined with waitForCondition(String jsConditional, String timeout) methods.
For example, if the AJAX functionality you want to test causes a new element to be added to the dom you can use something like the following.
String jsPoll = "";
jsPoll += "selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow()";
jsPoll += ".document.getElementById('DOMID')";
selenium.waitForCondition(jsPoll, "30000");
The condition will evaluate true when the element is added and the method will continue. If your AJAX function swaps elements (ie: one div for another similarly identified div), you can initialize your conditional with something like the following.
String jsInit = "";
jsInit += "!selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow()";
jsInit += ".document.getElementById('DOMID').setAttribute('SELENIUMTEST','1')";
String jsPoll = "";
selenium.runScript(jsInit);
jsPoll += "selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow()";
jsPoll += ".document.getElementById('DOMID').getAttribute('SELENIUMTEST') != 1";
selenium.waitForCondition(jsPoll, "30000");
The condition evaluates true when the element is swapped out by the AJAX function.

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