Custom action dont works

[necromind]

Code from here: https://github.com/segmentio/nightmare/issues/887#issuecomment-269412280

Nightmare.action('sendKeyPress',
  function(name, options, parent, win, renderer, done) {
    parent.respondTo('sendKeyPress', function(unicodeValue, done) {
      win.focus();
      win.webContents.sendInputEvent({
        type: "keyDown",
        keyCode: unicodeValue,
      });
      setTimeout(() => {
        win.webContents.sendInputEvent({
          type: "keyUp",
          keyCode: unicodeValue,
        });
        done();
      },50);
    });
    done();
  },
  function(unicodeValue, done) {
    this.child.call('sendKeyPress', unicodeValue, done);
  });

    nightmare
        //.cookies.clearAll()
        .viewport(1280, 1024)
        .goto('https://url/')
        .sendKeyPress('\u202D')
        .run();

And i have error:

return fn.apply(self, doneargs);
             ^
TypeError: Cannot read property 'apply' of undefined

Why dont works? This is like example from main wiki "Defining a custom action with an Electron method"

[necromind]

Solved. done must be first:

  function(done, unicodeValue) {
    this.child.call('sendKeyPress', unicodeValue, done);
  });

But this code anyway dont send press right key event.

[necromind]

var Nightmare = require('nightmare');

Nightmare.action('clearCache',
  function(name, options, parent, win, renderer, done) {
    parent.respondTo('clearCache', function(done) {
      //win.webContents.session.clearCache(done);
    });
    done();
  },
  function(message,done) {
    this.child.call('clearCache', done);
  });

  var  nightmare = Nightmare(
      {
        show: true
      });

  nightmare
    //go to a url
    .goto('ulr')
    //clear the cache
    .clearCache()
    .wait(3000)
    //go to another url
    .goto('http://ya.ru')
    //perform other actions
    .then(() => {
      //...
    })
    //... other actions...
    //.then(nightmare.end())
    .catch((e) => console.dir(e));

This code from examples dont work too! App sleeps at clearCache point. HOW can i get access to win.webContents for using sendInputEvent. Help me pls.

[rosshinkley]

Your clearCache method takes a message parameter, but you're not passing anything to the call in your Nightmare chain. What happens if you try changing function(message, done) to just function(done)?

[gneccao]

i have the same problem with the custom actions. I'm using the 2.9.1 and still have the problem for me. I try to use the example in the home page, but appears a error to me: "Unhandled promise rejection (rejection id: 1): Nothing responds to "clearCache".

[contobob]

+1. No custom action works for me either if it involves interacting with electron.

I can't even get the clearCache custom action from the documentation to work.

Here's a test script (copy-pasted clearCache from doc):

var Nightmare = require('nightmare');
Nightmare.action('clearCache',
    function(name, options, parent, win, renderer, done) {
        parent.respondTo('clearCache', function(done) {
            win.webContents.session.clearCache(done);
        });
        done();
    },
    function(done) {
        this.child.call('clearCache', done);
    });

var nightmare = Nightmare({
    show: true,
    electronPath: require('electron'),
});

nightmare
    .clearCache()
    .goto('http://google.com')
    .evaluate(function () {
        return document.title;
    })
    .end()
    .then(function (result) {
        console.log(result);
    })
    .catch(function (error) {
        console.error('Retrieve title failed:', error);
    });

What happens when I run node actionstest.js: a blank electron window opens up. Nightmare then stalls on the white page until I quit the script via ctrl-c.

Full output for DEBUG=nightmare:*,electron:* node actionstest.js (it stalls immediately after):

  nightmare:log adding action for clearCache +0ms

Nightmare verision 2.9.1. Electron version 1.5.0. Unlikely related but: macOS Sierra 10.12.2.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

The bug, whatever it is, renders all custom actions useless, including kyungw00k/nightmare-webrequest-addon and rosshinkley/nightmare-load-filter.

[rosshinkley]

@contobob What you have there will almost certainly not work: win.webContents.session does not exist until you navigate away from default:blank. (Why would you try to clear a session cache before it exists?)

If you're having problems with those plugins, i would encourage you to open issues there.

[contobob]

Thanks for the reply @rosshinkley. Does that mean the docs in README.md should be updated? My test code was mainly a copy-paste of what can be found here in the clearCache example. The doc puts clearCache before goto.

[ysimonson]

Having the same issue. This is almost a copy-paste from the readme:

Nightmare.action('clearCache',
  function(name, options, parent, win, renderer, done) {
    parent.respondTo('clearCache', function(done) {
      win.webContents.session.clearCache(done);
    });
    done();
  },
  function(done) {
    this.child.call('clearCache', done);
  });

var nightmare = Nightmare({
    show: true,
    webPreferences: {
        partition: 'testaction'
    }
});

nightmare
  .clearCache()
  .goto('http://example.org')
  .then(function() {
    console.log("done");
    process.exit(0);
  });

However, it works fine if you remove the bits that call/declare the action:

var nightmare = Nightmare({
    show: true,
    webPreferences: {
        partition: 'testaction'
    }
});

nightmare
  .goto('http://example.org')
  .then(function() {
    console.log("done");
    process.exit(0);
  });

[ysimonson]

It's not an issue strictly with the placement of clearCache - granted that's probably wrong, even though it's in the readme. If you call goto before clearCache, it'll never get past clearCache - i.e. in this example, it'll print A, but not B or C.

Nightmare.action('clearCache',
  function(name, options, parent, win, renderer, done) {
    console.log("B");
    parent.respondTo('clearCache', function(done) {
      console.log("C");
      win.webContents.session.clearCache(done);
    });
    done();
  },
  function(done) {
    console.log("A");
    this.child.call('clearCache', done);
  });

var nightmare = Nightmare({
    show: true,
    webPreferences: {
        partition: 'testaction'
    }
});

nightmare
  .goto('http://example.org')
  .clearCache()
  .then(function() {
    console.log("done");
    process.exit(0);
  });

IIRC, I saw the same issue w/ @rosshinkley's nightmare-upload. FWIW, on nightmare 2.9.1 as well.

[rosshinkley]

@ysimonson It does print B and C, just not to stdout of the node process. Instead, those get printed (rightfully) to Electron's stdout. Consider your above script, but instead of running with node example.js you run with DEBUG=electron* node example.js. You'll see the following output:

  electron:stdout B +0ms
A
  electron:stdout C +358ms

... which is precisely what you would expect to see. B when the action is created on the instance, followed by A when the action is called, followed by C when the action responds to the call.

[rosshinkley]

Bah, I realized I didn't answer the question of why it's not calling back: It looks like the clearCache callback isn't getting called. I'll dig into that.

[entrptaher]

@rosshinkley Have a look into this, its been several months since we've found such issue. Nothing responds to such actions. :/

[rosshinkley]

In this particular case, it looks like webContents.session.clearCache never calls back, and it's not immediately clear why. I'm inclined to say this is a bug with Electron: the source for clearCache does not have a callback call, at least in my cursory look. For contrast, compare that to clearStorage that does.

If you move the done call to the line after clearCache, does the cache actually clear? This may be worth opening with Electron. Thoughts?

[aight8]

Please fix. Is this package deprecated?

[entrptaher]

@rosshinkley If you create custom actions, almost same kind of error happens no matter the callback.

[aight8]

IMPORTANT I hope I can help - spend some hours on it now.

• the action registration must be BEFORE you create your nightmare instance.
• if you access for example the win.webContents.session property you must call the plugin after a page is loaded (means for example AFTER the goto) - @entrptaher in your code this could be the problem how I see on the screen shot. The problem is that it fails silently because exceptions are not reported which are throwed electron side. (see below to improve this)

To this package to improve:

• console.* calls in "children function" (which run on electron children process) should be redirected also to the main process output - it's hard to debug otherwise if you don't know that parent.emit('log', 'my_value') exists, also it depends on the DEBUG var - don't forget it (DEBUG=* node srv.js)
• Exceptions on electron side should be catched and redirected to the client and throwed there again with a note that it happened on electron side. Currently it crashes without infos.
• The Nighmare.action interface to register action is weird because of it's (name[, childFn], parentFn) signature. It must be clarified what the "child" and "parent" process are - and the optional value should be at the end - I can imagine the reason was the order, whyever - it's really more confusing. I just say:

  var name = arguments[0], childfn, parentfn;
  if(arguments.length === 2) {
    parentfn = arguments[1];
  } else {
    parentfn = arguments[2];
    childfn = arguments[1];
  }

• The API documentation has following flaws:
  • definitely missing of an overview - a simply TOC could help so much for orientation
  • document the rest of the members of the nightmare object
• I saw that @types/nightmare is currently on version 1.6, older than 2 years. This package has over 11k stars. No TS users here? I wrote the whole definition, very neat and complete. I will spend some time to prepare and publish it on @types if there are people who are interested for it, but if there are 12k js only users its okey.

[entrptaher]

Custom actions worked if I used it after a goto, but sometimes you need actions to do before going to any url. But what more important is that all examples from the docs are not working properly. Any action after goto works and any action before goto simply fails.

[aight8]

Yes I know they should be removed all, temporarily. Currently not examples but broken code.

[entrptaher]

This is what I had to do with all done() functions to make it working. Example code: https://gist.github.com/entrptaher/870246d824c10317edf72a0d4b86760e

done inside parent, done inside the action and also done in the callbacks. It's a done-strophic problem :D

[rosshinkley]

Custom actions worked if I used it after a goto, but sometimes you need actions to do before going to any url.

I think I understand what the problem is now after seeing your example. When Nightmare.action() (on the prototype) is called, there's an action put on the prototypal queue to execute action methods on all created instances. Looking at your gist, it occurs to me there might be a bug when immediately calling a plugin method. Poking around in the unit tests for Nightmare, I don't think this particular case is tested for and is probably worth adding to at least prove out that's not the problem.

Exceptions on electron side should be catched and redirected to the client and throwed there again with a note that it happened on electron side. Currently it crashes without infos.

This is a somewhat complicated topic. See #646.

...and the optional value should be at the end - I can imagine the reason was the order, whyever...

This is because .action() already existed, and I wanted to have as much backwards compatibility with previous versions as possible.

The API documentation has following flaws:

You missed a few. ;) Kidding aside, this has been on my backburner for a long time - it's why nightmare-examples exists. I'd like for this to all be wrapped up on github pages, but I haven't made it that far yet.

I saw that @types/nightmare is currently on version 1.6, older than 2 years.

PR DefinitelyTyped?

If you create custom actions, almost same kind of error happens no matter the callback.

I don't think that's true as there are a lot of plugin libraries that use this. That said, I'm almost positive you've hit a bug with either how caching works in Electron and/or with how actions are created on the instance after Electron is started.

[SkyHacks]

I ran into issues when my custom Electron actions were defined after the instance was created. Moving those up fixed the issues I was having. Just FYI to anyone who makes the same mistake.

[casesandberg]

Looks like this is resolved. There are a couple of points of things to improve but those should be opened as separate issues. I am going to close this for now but feel free to open a new issue if you are still having problems.

[rinogo]

As @entrptaher mentioned, since the clearCache callback isn't getting called, "manually" calling done() seems to fix the problem. However, couldn't that potentially mess up timing for subsequent requests?

On a "fast" machine, it seems to me that some of the first subsequent HTTP requests would still use the cache, and then once clearCache had actually cleared the cache (at some non-deterministic time), HTTP requests would actually be performed (i.e. actual packets over the network) since the cache would finally be empty. Right? Or am I misunderstanding something?