Is it a good practice to place an assertion in the afterEach block?

Question

Environment: Protractor, jasmine, typescript

I have several tests that have different setup and the same assertion. Is it a good practice to enter different steps in each it inside a describe and the expect assertion in the afterEach block?

Example: Form contains phoneNumberField and a submitBtn;

Test 1: Enter too short number into phoneNumberField => Expect submitBtn to be disabled.

Test 2: Enter text into phoneNumberField => Expect submitBtn to be disabled Example code:

describe('Invalid phone number => submitBtn disabled', () => {

    afterEach(() => {
        expect(submitBtn.isEnabled()).toBeFalsy();
    });

    it('Too short number input', () => {
        phoneNumberField.sendKeys('012');
    });

    it('Text input', () => {
        phoneNumberField.sendKeys('asdf');
    });
});

Sergey Pleshakov · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-09T15:29:34.123

Honestly I'm surprised it works this way... I was going to say "no, it's not a good practice..." but I didn't find any disadvantages of doing it this way after playing around for a few minutes with it.

But still I wouldn't do it, because if you place expect() in it() blocks, it's easy to see the sequence of the logic in your tests (e.g. open page->expect smtng; click button->expect smtng; etc)

But you can just implement it, use it for a bit and see if it works out well for yourself

P.S. just to visualize why I think it's not a terrible idea as it may seem to be: having below code

beforeAll(async () => {expect(true).toBe(false)});

it("1", async () => {
});

it("2", async () => {
});

it("3", async () => {
});

will produce following output

Suite: UCare - Provider Search - 'Places' tab
    ✗ 1 (0.002 sec)
      - Expected true to be false.
          at UserContext.beforeAll (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/protractor/custom_implementation/test.spec.js:11:38)
          at /Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:112:25
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)
          at SimpleScheduler.promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2242:12)
          at schedulerExecute (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:95:18)
          at promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2232:22)
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)

    ✗ 2 (1 sec)
      - Expected true to be false.
          at UserContext.beforeAll (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/protractor/custom_implementation/test.spec.js:11:38)
          at /Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:112:25
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)
          at SimpleScheduler.promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2242:12)
          at schedulerExecute (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:95:18)
          at promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2232:22)
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)

    ✗ 3 (0.907 sec)
      - Expected true to be false.
          at UserContext.beforeAll (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/protractor/custom_implementation/test.spec.js:11:38)
          at /Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:112:25
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)
          at SimpleScheduler.promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2242:12)
          at schedulerExecute (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/jasminewd2/index.js:95:18)
          at promise (/Users/spleshakov/Documents/ui-automation/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/promise.js:2232:22)
          at new Promise (<anonymous>)

As it can be seen report is being printed normally where every failure is shown as individual a failure of it() test case

Agreed. We actually have linting rules setup that only allow assertions in `it` blocks. Having them in your setup and tear down just doesn't feel right. — tehbeardedone, May 08 '19 at 20:08
@tehbeardedone although if failures do happen, they'll be displayed as a part of `it()` block. Again, I'm just surprised... — Sergey Pleshakov, May 09 '19 at 15:24

Is it a good practice to place an assertion in the afterEach block?

1 Answers1