Why Is This Ruby While Statement Not Working - ruby

Question

Background: This is using page-object, and Rspec. The page, objects are setup correctly. Basically what is happening is its skipping the while statement and going directly to checking of the variable label exists on the page.
What it SHOULD do is check if the label variable is on the page and if not then wait 20 seconds and refresh the page then check again for up to 30 times and if it fails on the 30th time then it should fail all together. If it finds it then it should check again and pass it.
def check_label(label, current_page)
labels_filter_element.click
check_label_sla(label, current_page)
current_page.text.should include label
end
def check_label_sla(label, current_page)
t = 30
i = 0
while i < t
if current_page.text.should include label
return
else
sleep(20)
current_page.refresh
i += 1
end
end
end
I think what is happening is if current_page.text.should include label is always returning TRUE, but I'm not sure. If more info is needed please let me know.

Answer 1

I am making the following assumptions:
The behaviour you are seeing is that the page is first loaded, the labels_filter_element is clicked, the label is not on the page and the test fails immediately without refreshing the page.
label is a string
Given these assumptions, the problem is with the if-statement:
if current_page.text.should include label
When the if statement is executed, it will assert that the page includes the label:
If the page has the label, the code in the if will be executed (ie it will immediately return and the assertion in check_label will pass).
In the case that the page does not have the label, the assertion will throw an exception causing the test to fail immediately (ie the else code will not get executed). So the test is failing inside the check_label_sla method, not at the end of the check_label method (which makes it seem like the while loop is not working).
You want the if statement to check that the text is included, without making an assertion. Therefore you want:
if current_page.text.include? label
So your check_label_sla method would become:
def check_label_sla(label, current_page)
t = 30
i = 0
while i < t
if current_page.text.include? label
return
else
sleep(20)
current_page.refresh
i += 1
end
end
end
Or you could reduce it to:
def check_label_sla(label, current_page)
30.times do
return if current_page.text.include? label
sleep(20)
current_page.refresh
end
end