Problems using PhantomJS inside Mocha

Question

I'm having issues while trying to send PhantomJS calls to servers from my Mocha testsuite.

Problem

I'm trying to use PhantomJS to do calls against an endpoint. I have the first call working.

But I have two problems:

• The current script runs well for the first time, but consecutive runs when watching some files make the tests fail. Do do I solve this?
• This does not seem like a nice way to do these tests, is there a better alternative?

Setup:

• Gulp as watcher
• gulp-mocha to run tests
• phantom-sync to do some end2end testing

Mocha test file (simplified):

if(typeof process != 'undefined') {
  var should = require('chai').should();
  var _ps = require('phantom-sync');
  var phantom = _ps.phantom;
  var sync = _ps.sync;
}

describe('Login', function() {
  this.timeout(5000);

  it('should be able to open CMS', function(done) {

    sync(function() {
      var ph = phantom.create();
      var page = ph.createPage();
      var status = page.open('http://www.google.com'); // Get a default CMS url...
      status.should.equal('success');
      ph.exit();
      return done();
    });

  });

  it('should redirect after successful login');

});

Gulpfile (simplified):

gulp.task('test-develop', ['scripts'], function() {
  return test(null, true);
});

var keepAlive = false;

function test(reporter, _keepAlive) {

  keepAlive = _keepAlive;

  return gulp.src('test/**/*.js')
    .pipe(plugins.plumber())
    .pipe(plugins.mocha({ reporter: reporter || 'spec' })
      .on('error', onError));

}

function onError(err) {

  console.log(err.toString());
  if (keepAlive) {
    this.emit('end');
  } else {
    // if you want to be really specific
    process.exit(1);
  }

}

gulp.task('watch-test', function() {
  gulp.watch('test/**/*.js', ['test-develop']);
});

Errors:

➜  [project_dir] git:(feature/phantomjs-tests) ✗ gulp watch-test
[gulp] Using gulpfile [project_dir]/gulpfile.js
[gulp] Starting 'watch-test'...
[gulp] Finished 'watch-test' after 26 ms
[gulp] Starting 'scripts'...
[gulp] Finished 'scripts' after 530 ms
[gulp] Starting 'test-develop'...


  Homepage
    Menu
      - should open without error
      - should close without error

  Login
    ✓ should be able to open CMS (2126ms)
    - should capture wrong username
    - should capture wrong password
    - should capture wrong username & password
    - should redirect after successful login

  ArtobjectPage
    #ArtobjectPage
      - should save $container
      - should call setupZoom
      - should call setupInfoButton
      - should call setupObjectData


  1 passing (2s)
  10 pending

[gulp] Finished 'test-develop' after 2.42 s
[gulp] Starting 'scripts'...
[gulp] Finished 'scripts' after 94 ms
[gulp] Starting 'test-develop'...


  Homepage
    Menu
      - should open without error
      - should close without error

  Login
    1) should be able to open CMS
    - should capture wrong username
    - should capture wrong password
    - should capture wrong username & password
    - should redirect after successful login

  ArtobjectPage
    #ArtobjectPage
      - should save $container
      - should call setupZoom
      - should call setupInfoButton
      - should call setupObjectData


  0 passing (2ms)
  10 pending
  1 failing

  1) Login should be able to open CMS:
     TypeError: undefined is not a function
      at sync ([project_dir]/node_modules/phantom-sync/node_modules/make-sync/lib/make-sync.js:132:10)
      at Context.<anonymous> ([project_dir]/test/e2e/login.js:13:5)
      at Test.Runnable.run ([project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runnable.js:196:15)
      at Runner.runTest ([project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:374:10)
      at [project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:452:12
      at next ([project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:299:14)
      at [project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:309:7
      at next ([project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:247:23)
      at Object._onImmediate ([project_dir]/node_modules/gulp-mocha/node_modules/mocha/lib/runner.js:276:5)
      at processImmediate [as _immediateCallback] (timers.js:330:15)



[gulp] Error in plugin 'gulp-mocha': 1 test failed.
[gulp] Finished 'test-develop' after 85 ms

Answer 1

It ended up state being evil and Phantom not properly clearing it's cache & cookies when asked to.