Behat and “The current node list is empty.” error.

If your receiving the error “The current node list is empty” while using Behat, then likely your project is returning an HTTP 500 error. This may be because your bundle depends on some other bundle not available in your test environment. This was the case when for me when testing a bundle on travis-ci and i was not able to find documentation on this error.

One solution as suggested on github is to try dumping the contents of the scraper/browser to see what kind of error your getting.

     /**
     * @Then /^I dump the contents$/
     */
    public function iDumpTheContents()
    {
        print_r($this->getSession()->getPage()->getContent());
        //or print_r($this->getSession()->getDriver()->getContent());
        // The following produces "The current node list is empty."
        //print_r($this->getSession()->getDriver()->getText('//html'));
    }

/**

* @Then /^I dump the contents$/

public function iDumpTheContents()

{

print_r($this->getSession()->getPage()->getContent());

//or print_r($this->getSession()->getDriver()->getContent());

// The following produces "The current node list is empty."

//print_r($this->getSession()->getDriver()->getText('//html'));

}

However that will likely not give you any output if the server is returning an HTTP 500 internal server error. Your best bet is to just check your logs and do a search for any errors.

If your trying to run your functional tests on travis-ci then you might want to check out this great article on running Behat scenarios in isolation of your project.

Best of luck.

Set date (x)days from now in Behat with Symfony2 forms

Using Behat i needed to be able to set a date in a form (x) number of days from the current date. This however is a problem as Behat cannot set a date (x) number of days from now as it does not know the current date. So a simple solution is to create a Behat step definition that takes the field name and a number of days. My step definition looks something like this:

    And I select from "select[id^=Post_unlockedUntilDate]" a date "2" days from now

1	And I select from "select[id^=Post_unlockedUntilDate]" a date "2" days from now

The reason i went with a CSS selector is because Behat supports this anyway, and Symfony2 can create a date form by splitting the field into 3 separate fields, for Month/Day and Year respectively. So we will need to identify 3 fields in our form. Symfony2 will label them with each with the overall field name with an additional underscore and designation. Each field will be a select field.

For example, if my field is called Post_unlockedUntilDate (which was a real field i needed this test case for [the Post_ designation came from symfony based on the entity the form related to), then the 3 fields i would need to find (as created by symfony) would be:

Post_unlockedUntilDate_year
Post_unlockedUntilDate_month
Post_unlockedUntilDate_day

So i created a step definition that takes the CSS and finds the fields by the given selector. Then identifies each field in the results and assigns them to an array with a key for ‘day’, ‘month’ and ‘year’. Then all we need to do is create a new datetime object set (x) number of days from now and then apply that to each field.

    /**
     * 
	 * @Given /^I select from "([^"]*)" a date "([^"]*)" days from now$/
	 */
	public function iSelectFromADateDaysFromNow($cssQuery, $days)
	{
        $items = array_map(
            function ($element) {
				$id = $element->getAttribute('id');
				
				if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('year'), strlen($id)) == 'year') {
					$fieldName = 'year';
				}
			
				if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('month'), strlen($id)) == 'month') {
					$fieldName = 'month';
				}
			
				if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('day'), strlen($id)) == 'day') {
					$fieldName = 'day';
				}
				
                return array(
                	$fieldName => $element
                );
            },
            $this->getPage()->findAll('css', $cssQuery)
		);
		
		$fields = array();
		foreach ($items as $item) {
			foreach ($item as $key => $field) {
				$fields[$key] = $field;
			}
		}
		
		WebTestCase::assertCount(3, $fields, 'Date fields could not be found!');
		
		$date = new \Datetime('now + ' . $days . ' days');
		
		$fields['year']->selectOption($date->format('Y'));
		$fields['month']->selectOption($date->format('M'));
		$fields['day']->selectOption($date->format('d'));
	}

/**

* @Given /^I select from "([^"]*)" a date "([^"]*)" days from now$/

public function iSelectFromADateDaysFromNow($cssQuery, $days)

{

$items = array_map(

function ($element) {

$id = $element->getAttribute('id');

if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('year'), strlen($id)) == 'year') {

$fieldName = 'year';

}

if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('month'), strlen($id)) == 'month') {

$fieldName = 'month';

}

if (substr($id, strlen($id) - strlen('day'), strlen($id)) == 'day') {

$fieldName = 'day';

}

return array(

$fieldName => $element

);

$this->getPage()->findAll('css', $cssQuery)

);

$fields = array();

foreach ($items as $item) {

foreach ($item as $key => $field) {

$fields[$key] = $field;

}

WebTestCase::assertCount(3, $fields, 'Date fields could not be found!');

$date = new \Datetime('now + ' . $days . ' days');

$fields['year']->selectOption($date->format('Y'));

$fields['month']->selectOption($date->format('M'));

$fields['day']->selectOption($date->format('d'));

}

So to use it we just call:

    And I select from "select[id^=Post_unlockedUntilDate]" a date "2" days from now

1	And I select from "select[id^=Post_unlockedUntilDate]" a date "2" days from now

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Simple Method for Checking for Order With Behat

While needing to write a test to check the order of 2 items (within a given CSS query) in Behat, I did a little googling and came across this website here.

The tutorial is great and i just wanted to give a shout out to the author for their great content. I also made a slight change to include testing for the existing of the 2 items.

Here is my slightly updated version:

    /**
     * 
     * @Then /^"([^"]*)" should precede "([^"]*)" for the query "([^"]*)"$/
     */
    public function shouldPrecedeForTheQuery($textBefore, $textAfter, $cssQuery)
    {
		// http://neverstopbuilding.net/simple-method-for-checking-for-order-with-behat/
        $items = array_map(
            function ($element) {
                return $element->getText();
            },
            $this->getPage()->findAll('css', $cssQuery)
        );

		WebTestCase::assertTrue(in_array($textBefore, $items), 'The before text was not found!');
		WebTestCase::assertTrue(in_array($textAfter,  $items), 'The after text was not found!');
			
        WebTestCase::assertGreaterThan(
            array_search($textBefore, $items),
            array_search($textAfter, $items),
            "$textBefore does not proceed $textAfter"
        );
    }

/**

* @Then /^"([^"]*)" should precede "([^"]*)" for the query "([^"]*)"$/

public function shouldPrecedeForTheQuery($textBefore, $textAfter, $cssQuery)

{

// http://neverstopbuilding.net/simple-method-for-checking-for-order-with-behat/

$items = array_map(

function ($element) {

return $element->getText();

$this->getPage()->findAll('css', $cssQuery)

);

WebTestCase::assertTrue(in_array($textBefore, $items), 'The before text was not found!');

WebTestCase::assertTrue(in_array($textAfter, $items), 'The after text was not found!');

WebTestCase::assertGreaterThan(

array_search($textBefore, $items),

array_search($textAfter, $items),

"$textBefore does not proceed $textAfter"

);

}

You can see an example of the test i wrote using this method here.

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Tag: Behat

Behat and “The current node list is empty.” error.

Set date (x)days from now in Behat with Symfony2 forms

Simple Method for Checking for Order With Behat