Capybara doesn't execute Backbone model's fetch()

Question

I'm attempting to write an integration test for my single page app written in Backbone and Rails 3.2 Things seem to be working on the client side when using an actual browser (Chrome) However, when testing using client-side code using Capybara (with Cucumber), the model's fetch() methods don't complete. I do: $.active jQuery call, and the number doesn't go to 0.. any ideas on what might be wrong?

page.execute_script("$.active") # -> 0
page.execute_script("App.backboneModel.fetch()")
page.execute_script("$.active") # -> 1
# ... long time later...
page.execute_script("$.active") # -> 1

I'm using capybara-webkit as the headless browser, and I also tried with Selenium/firefox. This above code works completely on an actual browser with a rails instance booted up, but it doesn't work during testing! The ajax calls don't complete for some reason... I am completely stumped.

I fixed my error.. apparently, my backbone model was fetching with an id attribute that was null.. thus.. the controller couldn't respond to such a request. I fixed it by having my Rails API sending the id in the response (which I thought was in there but I did a left join which somehow obliterated the id field in the json response...) basically, client side backbone code was incorrectly interfacing with rails side after the initial model fetch, which caused subsequent fetches to fail. — Kevin Tham, Jul 20 '12 at 20:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 16 '12 at 11:51

Try this helper

def wait_for_ajax(timeout = Capybara.default_wait_time)
  page.wait_until(timeout) do
    page.evaluate_script 'jQuery.active == 0'
  end
end

Source / More info: http://artsy.github.com/blog/2012/02/03/reliably-testing-asynchronous-ui-w-slash-rspec-and-capybara/

Capybara doesn't execute Backbone model's fetch()

1 Answers1