Rails3 Google Maps testing with selenium - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm trying to test a google maps app with Rails3. I'm using cucumber with capybara and selenium for JavaScript testing.
I have a map where I wait for google maps to be loaded, and then send an ajax request to my server, where I get locations that I'm inserting into the map.
I'm wondering if it's possible with selenium to wait until google maps is loaded, the ajax call to my server is finished and the marker are placed inside the map. The other issue is, how to select this marker within google maps. Are there any selectors?
Or should I go the other way, and use a JS testing framework like Jasmine to test if my classes are loaded and so on. I don't have any experience with Jasmine, so is it possible to test a google maps?
Maybe someone knows a solution, or a hint if it's not possible, or a workaround or... ;)
[UPDATE 1]
I've found out how to select markers in google maps. If you look at googles selenium tests you can check out what they are doing. For example selecting a marker:
waitForElementPresent xpath=//img[contains(#src,'marker')]
But here comes the next problem. How do I select a specific marker? Is there a way inside the javascript google maps API to assign an ID to it, so that I can use #marker_1, #marker_2...?
And another strange thing is, that function like wait_for_element or wait_for_condition aren't available inside my cucumber step definitions. Are the google selenium tests using own function like that waitForElementPresent? Or are this standard selenium functions? I've found a lots of posts, where they always use something like
selenium.wait_for_condition
selenium.wait_for_element
or
#selenium.wait_for_condition
...
Inside my step definitions the selenium and the #selenium var a nil. How can I access this methods? I've also found this post, but it is from Oct. '08, so I think there must be a better solution (btw. this solution works on the first sight).
Like on this page, they give an overview of a few selenium methods how to wait for a condition or element. Is this still present? How can I use this functions?
[UPDATE 2]
Damn it, I've found out, that the selenium tests I mentioned above are for V2 of google maps, not for V3. I have tried it with
wait_until { page.has_xpath?("//img[contains(#src,'marker')]") }
But it doesn't work. The marker is visible on the map, but I get a timeout error, because with this XPath selector it is not found. I'm wondering if it is generally possible to select a marker out of the DOM.
I also tried to assign an additional attribute to the marker when I create it:
// marker is the marker returned by google maps after adding it to the map
$(marker).attr('id', "marker_1");
But when I try to access it with the jQuery selector $("#marker_1"), it doesn't find it. So, still no solution, yet.

Answer 1

What I do with mine is to execute the calls in your step definitions like so:
page.execute_script("launchmap()")
then check for their existence in the page..then do your normal ajax check in capybara. the marker will be contained in a div right? then if you call launchmap and create the markers, capybara SHOULD be able find your markers
UPDATE
found out about this plugin: http://vigetlabs.github.com/jmapping/examples/
it gives you semantic markup for your google maps(for graceful degradation) allowing you to actually check if a marker exists using capybara. hope it helps(dont have time to test it but it looks promising)

Answer 2

I found a way to Integration test my Google map with RSpec and Capybara. I wanted to write a test to assert that the content I got from an internal JSON-feed ended up in form of markers and info windows on my map (Google Maps API V3) in a Rails 4 app.
The problem:
Even when I ran the tests with Selenium Webdriver that supports JS, I didn't find a way to select the markers with Capybara to check for their content.
My solution:
1. I added a div with ID test-box to my HTML markup
2. I wrote three helper methods into my JS that had access to my maps markers and added the results to the test-box.
3. In Capybara I executed the helper methods and expected to find the expected content or values in the box.
The code:
HTML:
<div id="map-canvas"></div>
<div id="info-box"></div>
JS-helpers:
in app/assets/javascripts/events.js
// Test helper methods
testInfo = function(){
document.getElementById("info-box").innerHTML = markers[0].title;
};
testInfoCount = function(){
document.getElementById("info-box").innerHTML = markers.length;
};
testInfoWindow = function(){
document.getElementById("info-box").innerHTML = markers[0].title + ", " + markers[0].time;
};
"markers" in my code is an array I push in every marker after I have added it to the map. I can be sure that the content actually is on the map if it's in the markers array.
Test:
spec/features/map_feature_spec.rb:
require "rails_helper"
describe "Map", js: true do
let!(:john){create(:user)}
let!(:event1){create(:event, user: john)}
let!(:event2){create(:event)}
it "shows a marker for a geocoded event on front page" do
visit '/'
find('#main-map-canvas')
page.execute_script('testInfo()')
expect(page.find("div#info-box").text).to eq(event1.title)
end
it "shows a marker for each geocoded event on front page" do
visit '/'
find('#main-map-canvas')
page.execute_script('testInfoCount()')
expect(page.find("div#info-box").text).to eq("2")
end
it "shows a marker for an event on event's page" do
visit "/events/#{event1.id}"
expect(page).to have_css("#single-map-canvas")
page.execute_script('testInfo()')
expect(page.find("div#info-box").text).to eq(event1.title)
end
context "Tooltips" do
let!(:event1){create(:event)}
let!(:event2){create(:event)}
it "shows title and date on frontpage" do
visit "/"
find('#main-map-canvas')
page.execute_script('testInfoWindow()')
expect(page.find("div#info-box")).to have_content("Pauls Birthday Party, #{event1.nice_date}")
end
end
end
To run the javascripts Selenium webdriver and Firefox need to be installed (''gem "selenium-webdriver"'' in your Gemfile)
I'm creating the test content (let!...) using Factory Girl.
Running the tests you will actually see the markers on the map and their content appears in the test-box.

Answer 3

To your first question - use waitForCondition with a script that tests for the presense of the markers.
waitForCondition ( script,timeout ) Runs the specified JavaScript snippet repeatedly until it evaluates to "true". The snippet may have multiple lines, but only the result of the last line will be considered. Note that, by default, the snippet will be run in the runner's test window, not in the window of your application. To get the window of your application, you can use the JavaScript snippet selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow(), and then run your JavaScript in there
Arguments:
script - the JavaScript snippet to run timeout - a timeout in milliseconds, after which this command will return with an error

Answer 4

Be sure to enable the url capybara is using to run the test server into google console for your app.
You can check this URL (and the error message while loading google maps) by setting config.debug= true within Capybara driver config loading block.