Other exports from casper module

[charandas]

casper module provides an XPath selector helper called selectXPath in casperjs.

I think it would be handy to expose selectXPath in cli.js like thus:

// Load xPath helper
this.selectXPath = require('casper').selectXPath;

// Load casper
this.casper = require('casper').create({
...

Are you cool with that - or do you have other ideas around structuring the this instance? Shall I make a PR?

[nathanboktae]

Maybe, is it that you just don't want to include that 1-liner in all your tests?

That module is really boring :P s -> { type: 'xpath', path: s }

[charandas]

I guess, it goes back to reducing code-duplication. Depending on casperjs definition would be philosophically closer to good development for me.

[nathanboktae]

Yeah true, the CLI is intended to wire up the common use cases, leaving the core more pure for programmatic usage. Being that it already looks for chai and casper-chai, I can see it pulling up this module too. Yup send a PR.

[charandas]

Ok. Will send it soon. @nathanboktae

I do have one more related question: why are the casperjs options different between all.coffee test spec and bin/mocha-casperjs (excepting the obvious reason of variable arguments for the deliverable), specifically the missing mocha-casperjs-path option?

1. all.coffee:

   './bin/cli.js',
   '--mocha-path=node_modules/mocha',
   '--chai-path=node_modules/chai',
   '--casper-chai-path=node_modules/casper-chai'

2. bin/mocha-casperjs:

   $mcPath/cli.js --mocha-casperjs-path=$mcPath/..

I am finding something rather strange about the XPath helper once I expose it as mentioned in the first comment. I can access it while using mocha-casperjs but cannot in the tests.

[charandas]

My test is dumb and I am not sure if it satisfies any purpose in this case, but just so you know, how I am trying to access the helper in all.coffee:

it 'should select by XPath using casper XPath helper', (done) ->
      thisShouldPass
        test: ->
          casper.waitForSelector 'h1', ->
            selectXPath.should.be.a.function

Once I can understand what's going under-the-hood, I can make the PR with/without this test, as you prefer.

[nathanboktae]

why are the casperjs options different between all.coffee test spec and bin/mocha-casperjs

The dependencies for mocha-casperjs are peer dependencies, so for testing locally I have to point them to the developer dependencies, so that's why they have extra paths. as for the missing mocha-casperjs-path, it's abusing the fact that the working directory is what mocha-casperjs-path is supposed to be. I am not happy with all the funky path specifications and require dances needed... it's complex due to global vs local, require.paths not being supported for a while and capserj's wrapped require, but it's another issue.

As for the test, that looks fine. You don't need to do a waitForSelector so you can remove line 4.

[charandas]

@nathanboktae thanks. Yes, with the waitForSelector removed, the test is still failing though. Any reason the function would be undefined?

[nathanboktae]

It should be there.... Push your feature branch to your repository and I can take a look.

[charandas]

@nathanboktae Thanks much. Commit made. I am running test using npm test.

[charandas]

I gave you full permissions to my fork in case you decide to make additional changes.

[nathanboktae]

Your test needed to pass in the done to thisShouldPass, and also call the right chai assertion:

it 'should select by XPath using casper XPath helper', (done) ->
     thisShouldPass
        test: ->
            selectXPath.should.be.a('function')
     , done

Yeah CoffeeScript can be hard to read sometimes, ironically. I have a love-hate relationship to it.

[charandas]

Thanks for the direction and merge. Shorter name looks good. :thumbsup: