Selenium: how to wait for RichFaces ajax requests to complete - ajax

Question

I use selenium to test a JSF/RichFaces application. The tests randomly fail due to 'Element not found' errors. This is as described in Selenium: intermittent “element not found” issues, but it relates only to jQuery ajax calls.
The challenge here is to make the selenium test execution wait for all ajax requests to complete using selenium.waitForCondition(jsExpression, timeout). What is the best jsExpression when using RichFaces ajax calls?

Answer 1

I investigated the generated html for the a4j:status. The code below does the job for now, it's better than wait() statements, but I'm looking for a better solution.
// depends on <a4j:status> present in the page under test
selenium.waitForCondition(
"selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().document.getElementById(
"_viewRoot:status.start\").style.display == 'none'",
"3000");

Answer 2

I once found myself in the same situation as you. Additionally, I had a lot of elements that were actually found, but weren't visible - JSF wasn't quick enough to make them visible yet. Also, I got tired of writing selenium again and again.
So I sat down and wrote the code below. It waits for all elements to be present on the page and visible before interacting with them (or fails after a timeout). I have since moved to WebDriver, so I don't have the original code, but it was something like this:
public static long WAIT = 10000; // ten seconds
private void waitForElement(String locator) {
long targetTime = System.currentTimeMillis() + WAIT;
boolean found;
do {
found = selenium.isElementPresent(locator) && selenium.isVisible(locator);
} while (!found && (targetTime < System.currentTimeMillis()));
if (!found) {
throw new SeleniumException("Element " + locator + " not found");
}
}
public void click(String locator) {
waitForElement(locator);
selenium.click(locator);
}
public void type(String locator, String text) {
waitForElement(locator);
selenium.type(locator, text);
}
As for waitForCondition() this should be a code detecting whether an element exists or not:
String locator = "id=anything";
String script =
"var retValue = true;" +
"try {" +
" selenium.browserbot.findElement('" + locator + "');" +
"} catch(e) {" +
" retValue = false;" +
"}" +
"retValue;";
selenium.waitForCondition("!!selenium.browserbot.findElement('" + locator + "')", "10000");
selenium.click(locator);
and just the plain JavaScript:
var retValue = true;
try {
selenium.browserbot.findElement('" + locator + "');
} catch(e) {
retValue = false;
}
retValue;