Geb - Inconsistent behaviour in headless mode - grails

Question

I am testing a grails application and have the tests run by Hudson. The tests are passing 100% of the time when run on local machine.
Database Is always reset when the tests initialize.
I have problem setting the value for a dynamic form. In my .gsp I have the following :
<g:xEditableRefData owner="${license}" field="isPublic" config='YN'/>
This is generating an ‘Edit’ link,. When clicked a dropdown appears which allows the user to select between Yes or No. (screenshots at the end of mail):
Following is the generated code:
<span data-url="/demo/ajax/genericSetRel"
data-source="/demo/ajax/sel2RefdataSearch/YN?format=json&oid=License%3A1"
data-name="isPublic" data-type="select" data-pk="License:1"
class="xEditableManyToOne editable editable-click editable-empty" id="License:1:isPublic">Edit
</span>
And when clicked:
<span class="editable-inline editable-container">
<div>
<div class="editableform-loading" style="display: none;"></div>
<form class="form-inline editableform" style="">
<div class="control-group">
<div>
<div class="editable-input">
<select class="input-medium">
<option value="RefdataValue:1">Yes</option>
<option value="RefdataValue:2">No</option>
</select>
</div>
<div class="editable-buttons">
<button class="btn btn-primary editable-submit" type="submit">
<i class="icon-ok icon-white"></i>
</button>
<button class="btn editable-cancel" type="button">
<i class="icon-remove"></i>
</button>
</div>
</div>
<div class="editable-error-block help-block" style="display: none;"></div>
</div>
</form>
</div>
</span>
I have the following method in my Page class for setting the value of the edit/dropdown:
editIsPublic { option ->
$("span", 'data-name': "isPublic").click()
try {
waitFor { $("form.editableform") }
} catch (geb.waiting.WaitTimeoutException e) {
throw new RequiredPageContentNotPresent()
}
$("select.input-medium").value(option)
$("button.editable-submit").click()
}
This is always successful on my local machine, but when run headless on Hudson I get about 80% failure. When it fails the tests don’t stop, but the dropdown has wrong value, and no exceptions are thrown. I have also considered passing arrow keys instead of set the value but this is not a good option for other reasons. Any ideas why the above code is not working on Hudson? Is there any other way I could set the value?
UPDATE
Adding a lot of waitFor statements seems to have fixed the issue for now. I have defined the following closure, and I am using it on everything that is interactive.
waitElement {run ->
try{
waitFor{run()}
} catch (geb.waiting.WaitTimeoutException e) {
throw new RequiredPageContentNotPresent()
}
}

Answer 1

I didn't spend a lot of time trying to get headless firefox working, because I read of many issues such as these. I decided to give PhantomJS a try instead and it has been working exactly as expected so far.
To set up the PhantomJSDriver you need to:
Download/install PhantomJS per their docs
Add the PhantomJSDriver to your test dependencies 'com.github.detro.ghostdriver:phantomjsdriver:1.1.0'
Set a system property that points to the PhantomJS binary
Set PhantomJSDriver in the GebConfig file
Here's a simple example of what I put in my GebConfig:
System.setProperty("phantomjs.binary.path", "path/to/phantomjs/binary")
driver = {
def pjsDriver = new PhantomJSDriver()
// set window size manually because the default size is very small
pjsDriver.manage().window().size = new Dimension(1680, 1050)
pjsDriver
}
Sorry that doesn't directly answer the question of "why" some tests are having issues, but hopefully that will resolve it!