Testing AngularJS with Selenium

Question

I have a SPA application on stack ASP MVC + AngularJS and I'd like to test the UI. For now I'm trying Selenium with PhantomJS and WebKit drivers.

This is a sample testing page - view with single element. The list items <li> load dynamically from server and are bounded by Angular.

<div id="items">
    <li>text</li>
    <li>text2</li>
</div>

I'm trying to pass a test and there is an error in this line:

_driver.FindElements(By.TagName('li'))

At this point there are no loaded elements and _driver.PageSource doesn't contain elements.

How can I wait for the items to load? Please do not suggest Thread.Sleep()

Answer 1

This will wait for page loads / jquery.ajax (if present) and $http calls, and any accompanying digest/render cycle, throw it in a utility function and wait away.

/* C# Example
 var pageLoadWait = new WebDriverWait(WebDriver, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeout));
            pageLoadWait.Until<bool>(
                (driver) =>
                {
                    return (bool)JS.ExecuteScript(
@"*/
try {
  if (document.readyState !== 'complete') {
    return false; // Page not loaded yet
  }
  if (window.jQuery) {
    if (window.jQuery.active) {
      return false;
    } else if (window.jQuery.ajax && window.jQuery.ajax.active) {
      return false;
    }
  }
  if (window.angular) {
    if (!window.qa) {
      // Used to track the render cycle finish after loading is complete
      window.qa = {
        doneRendering: false
      };
    }
    // Get the angular injector for this app (change element if necessary)
    var injector = window.angular.element('body').injector();
    // Store providers to use for these checks
    var $rootScope = injector.get('$rootScope');
    var $http = injector.get('$http');
    var $timeout = injector.get('$timeout');
    // Check if digest
    if ($rootScope.$$phase === '$apply' || $rootScope.$$phase === '$digest' || $http.pendingRequests.length !== 0) {
      window.qa.doneRendering = false;
      return false; // Angular digesting or loading data
    }
    if (!window.qa.doneRendering) {
      // Set timeout to mark angular rendering as finished
      $timeout(function() {
        window.qa.doneRendering = true;
      }, 0);
      return false;
    }
  }
  return true;
} catch (ex) {
  return false;
}
/*");
});*/