Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient when JS errors are thrown

[pfleidi]

Hello,

Some days ago one of our tests using poltergeist started to fail with Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient errors.

Here's the code causing the error:

  within(:css, "form#node-type-form") do
    fill_in("name", :with => content_type)
    fill_in("description", :with => description)
    click_button("edit-submit")
  end

And here's the shell output:

      The PhantomJS client died while processing {"args":[2,3],"name":"click"} (Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient)
      (eval):2:in `send'
      (eval):2:in `click_button'
      ./features/step_definitions/content_creation_steps.rb:17
      ./features/step_definitions/content_creation_steps.rb:14:in `/^I create a content type named ["']([^"']+)["'] with description ["']([^"']+)["']$/'
      features/fivestar.feature:24:in `And I create a content type named "fivestar-01" with description "fivestar type"'

My current setup looks like this:

• Ruby 1.8.7
• Cucumber (1.2.1)
• Capybara (1.1.3)
• Poltergeist (1.0.2)
• PhantomJS 1.8.1

I am running my tests on OS X 10.8 and Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS. The js_errors option is set to false:

  options = {
    :js_errors => false,
    :window_size => [1280, 768],
    :debug => true
  }

After debugging the problem a bit more, I found out that a JS error is thrown when loading the site:

{"args"=>["http:/my.site/path"], "name"=>"visit"}
{"error"=>{"args"=>[[{"stack"=>"TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'jQuery.timeago.settings')\n    at http://my.site/sites/all/modules/timeago/timeago.js?mgexlw:13", "message"=>"TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'jQuery.timeago.settings')"}]], "name"=>"Poltergeist.JavascriptError"}}
Capybara::Poltergeist::JavascriptError
{"args"=>[".//body[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' logged-in ')]"], "name"=>"find"}
{"response"=>{"ids"=>[0], "page_id"=>1}}

After fixing the JS error, the test started working again. So the crash is probably caused by the uncaught error.

I also created a a crashdump of phantomJS.

It currently looks like phantomJS dies after encountering a JS error when js_error is set to false.

[jonleighton]

Do you get the error on the Ubuntu machine? If so please could you create a crash dump from there?

[pfleidi]

@jonleighton: Yes, a similar error occurred on the Ubuntu machine. Here's the crash report.

[jonleighton]

Can you try current master? js_errors: false was pretty broken before today.

[enricostano]

Same problem here on ArchLinux and :js_errors => false

{"name"=>"find", "args"=>[".//input[@id = 'submit']"]}
{"response"=>{"page_id"=>2, "ids"=>[2]}}
{"name"=>"click", "args"=>[2, 2]}
poltergeist [1363177956214] state default -> clicked
poltergeist [1363177956226] state clicked -> loading
PhantomJS has crashed. Please read the crash reporting guide at https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/wiki/Crash-Reporting and file a bug report at https://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/entry with the crash dump file attached: /tmp/7847aeeb-48ea-0700-2d748465-3f4a658d.dmp
{"name"=>"set_debug", "args"=>[true]}

The weird thing is that if I pause the test just before "hitting" the submit input waiting like a couple of seconds and then going ahead it works...

[olivierlacan]

@enricostano Still having this issue on ArchLinux? Having it on Ubuntu.

[enricostano]

sorry @olivierlacan , I gave up on this. Not using Poltergeist anymore. 😞

[olivierlacan]

Ditto. I don't blame Poltergeist to be fair. I blame PhantomJS.

[pixelpax]

This is frustrating. I'm having the same problem and I'm using PhantomJS 1.9.8

How do they not have this fixed?

What are you guys using instead now?

[constantm]

We're still getting this randomly on tests running on Semaphore. Not happening on local OSX dev machines.

[mois3x]

This is weird... still happening randomly when it is used on Rails 3, On rails 4 its ok.

[twalpole]

Can anyone provide a minimal example that reproduces the issue? Without that it's pretty hard to fix

[twalpole]

Closing this due to age, lack of details usable for debugging and the appearance of it most likely being an issue with older phantomjs -- If anyone has a reproducible test case using latest versions of poltergeist/phantomjs please open a new issue