feature request: add a message to the options hash

[iezer]

We'd like to be able to add a message to options that are passed to expectElement. This is useful because sometimes we have synchronous helpers for finding an element. Example:

// helper
findButton(app, buttonText) {
  return find(`button:contains(${buttonText})`);
}

// test
  expectElement(findButton('Save Profile')); 

If this fails, we get a cryptic message like found 0 of false but expected 1 or found 0 of [Object] but expected 1

We'd like to be able to do expectElement(findButton('Save Profile'), 1, options: { message: { 'Save Profile Button' }}) and see found 0 of Save Profile Button

Now that I'm looking at this example we can probably think of a better syntax but the general idea applies.

@bantic appreciate your thoughts. CC @amyrlam @tundal45

[bantic]

@iezer Yeah, I think this would be great. Imo the most important thing is finding a good syntax for providing the message. Adding options: { message: '...' } seems ok, but do you have any ideas for something terser?

[tundal45]

@bantic We were thinking expectElement(findButton('Save Profile'), 'Save button displays correctly'); where the message is an optional parameter. CC @iezer

[iezer]

@bantic @tundal45 @amyrlam

We can detect if the 3rd parameter is a string or an object. In the former case use that string as the message, and in the latter look for a msg or message property, so expectElement(findButton('Save'), 1, 'Save Button'); and expectElement(findButton('Save'), 1, { msg: 'Save Button' }) would both work.

In either case we should swap that message into the complete message from the helper so we would display Found 0 of 'Save Button' but expected 1

[stefanpenner]

something I have found useful in async tests, is the ability to pause and resume tests. At work we are using this, and its quite nice. This differs from a debugger, in that you can still use and interact with the paused application, and differs from the existing pauseTest helper, because it can be resumed.

example:

import pause from './helpers/pause';

test("fooo", async () => {

  await visit('/foo');

  await pause(); // will pause here, but can be resumed by typing `resume`
  await click('#bar');

  // some assertions
})

codez: https://gist.github.com/stefanpenner/0baadd08d0733f9e8ae0

[amyrlam]

Submitted a PR. Please let me know if any feedback!

I think a good next step would be to change

expectElement(findButton('Save'), 1, { msg: 'Save Button' })

to just be

expectElement(findButton('Save'), 1, 'Save Button'); like assert.ok syntax

but not sure how to do that yet since options is { contains: 'foo', message: 'whatevs }

[iezer]

@amyrlam Can I close this issue?

I've opened a separate issue #32 for @stefanpenner 's suggestion to add a pause helper.

[amyrlam]

👍 and thanks for the help