TypeError: Cannot read property 'value' of undefined

[samhatoum]

Issue by thiagodelgado111 Friday Jul 29, 2016 at 19:25 GMT Originally opened as https://github.com/xolvio/chimp/issues/436

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Expected behaviour

Step definition runs without throwing while trying to set values, click, submit forms and wait for given conditional statements.

Actual behaviour

An error is thrown intermitently

Steps to reproduce the problem

Cannot isolate the problem since it happens intermitently :(. This is the definition of the step where the problem occurs.

// Registration step 1
client.waitForExist('[hook="register-form"]');
client.setValue('[hook="email-address"]', userEmail);
client.submitForm('[hook="register-form"]');

client.waitForExist('[hook="register-form"]');
client.setValue('[hook="first-name"]', 'John');
client.setValue('[hook="last-name"]', 'Doe');
client.setValue('[hook="username"]', 'john_doe');
client.submitForm('[hook="register-form"]');

client.waitForExist('[hook="register-form"]');
client.setValue('[hook="password"]', 'userpassword');
client.submitForm('[hook="register-form"]');
expect(client.getText('[hook="success-message"]')).not.toBe('');
client.click('[hook="success-message"]');

client.waitUntil(function () {
  return !client.isVisible('[hook="success-message"]');
});

Used version

• Chimp: 0.36.1
• Node.js: v5.5
• Operation system: Ubuntu LTS

  Console / Log Output

https://gist.github.com/thiagodelgado111/561e1e00b2424fe58a0adb7bf41df6cf

I think that some error is being thrown somewhere on my code and then when chimp tries to report the error, something happens

[samhatoum]

Comment by lucetius Tuesday Oct 04, 2016 at 10:12 GMT

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We can't reproduce the problem. Does this error still exist in the newest chimp version? If not, please provide us with more detailed scenario.

[samhatoum]

Comment by dane-harnett Wednesday Oct 12, 2016 at 07:00 GMT

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I'm having this issue as well: Chimp: 0.41.1 Node.js: 6.7.0 OS: Ubuntu

[samhatoum]

Comment by gferreri Thursday Oct 13, 2016 at 20:50 GMT

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+1 for this issue. We see this intermittently in our Travis CI build. After it occurs, every test that runs after that error also fails with errors such as

TypeError: browser.element(...).click is not a function

[samhatoum]

Comment by lgandecki Thursday Oct 13, 2016 at 21:31 GMT

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Do you guys get screenshots on errors? It would be interesting to see whether the elements you try to work with are actually on the screen. If the problems are intermittently in all cases that would suggest some kind of a timing issue. We run over a thousand scenarios on every commit in a pretty big project (14 devs), and so far (about 6 months) every time we see "random errors", they eventually turn out to be caused by our mistakes, not chimp's :) (as much as we would love to blame it on the chimp ;-) )

Not saying that this is the case with you guys, or that chimp is perfect - just sharing our experience.

Are the errors repeating on the same elements/same scenarios? If screenshots are problematic, maybe HTML dump could help?

[samhatoum]

Comment by kyleian Tuesday Oct 18, 2016 at 13:19 GMT

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Running into a similar experience on my end with the same effects @gferreri reports, at first I'd thought it was my upgrading to chimp 0.41.1 locally or my webdriverio version/usage, though I'm seeing the same thing on jenkins builds where we're deployed with chimp 0.33.1. Similar to @thiagodelgado111 , I experience it intermittently in so far as different locations in the block, but only when adding additional log outs to see what's going on, which might lend to the timing issue @lgandecki suggest.

In the below example, running the second/nested use of getText() against the stored previousListItem produces the error (typically). In order to get around this in the mean time, I just created new variables in my nested scope / restored the element off the page into those new variables, though I ended up with the same error in the jenkins build further along in the loop (iteration 8 / 15). In so far as screenshots, I confirmed that the items existed on the page during the timeout window I had manually, though I'dve thought the webdriverio call would fail on the promise if the element was not on the screen, rather than allowing me to use it at least once further down the line.

https://gist.github.com/kyleian/911e33e84e0e60074365e14149c34e09

For now I've tagged the scenarios to leave them off the suite, so as to avoid successive scenarios failing due to timeout.

[samhatoum]

Comment by kyleian Tuesday Oct 18, 2016 at 20:23 GMT

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Adding small browser.pause() between key browser calls seems to resolve the error on my end - a bit undesirable, but does seem to conform with what @lgandecki suggests in so far as a timing issue.

[samhatoum]

Comment by dane-harnett Tuesday Oct 18, 2016 at 22:16 GMT

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I seem to have resolved my issue by downgrading the NodeJS version to 5.8.0 (which was the version we were previously using and this issue was not occurring on) ... we upgraded chimp from 0.30.0 to 0.41.1 AND upgraded nodeJS from 5.8.0 to 6.7.0 at the same time which seems to be the issue for us.

[samhatoum]

Comment by kyleian Wednesday Oct 19, 2016 at 00:31 GMT

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@dane-harnett - gave that a shot and downgrading to 5.8 did nothing on my end; any chance you provide a short snippet with where/what calls you previously experienced the resolved issue for reference? (At this point I'm Node.JS 5.8.0 / chimp 0.41.2).