Suggestion/Discussion: Bring `open_browser` to controller tests

This is an awesome idea. I wouldn’t sweat it about porting it to Phoenix just yet. I’m glad to see there’s appetite to add this feature to PhoenixTest so I’d focus on that so people can start using it and providing feedback. I’m sure the Phoenix team will figure out the best to integrate it, especially when it has been proven in a third party library by that time.

Right, this is definitely the way to go about it. Thanks!

This is now live in PhoenixTest. If anyone has controller tests and is interested in trying it out that would be much appreciated!

Hi @sodapopcan thank you! It looks like it works, if I understand it right, a ‘controller test’ is a test for a ‘dead view’ that includes a controller as well (otherwise there’s no page to render or no place for actions to respond to). This allows for a nice test-first workflow with some visibility into the page

I cobbled together a sample based on the message explaining the PR. Basically took the test I wrote, assigned the session and put a call to open_browser in the middle. (The test currently fails, because the form doesn’t exist yet).

defmodule LivingsoftwareUkWeb.AdminCanCreateUserTest do
  use LivingsoftwareUkWeb.FeatureCase, async: true

  test "Prospect can initiate contact", %{conn: conn} do
   session = conn
    |> visit("/")
    |> click_link("Talk to us")

    open_browser(session)

   session
    |> fill_form("#contact-us-form", name: "Gandalf the great", email: "gandalf@example.com")

Result: I get a test failure (as expected #contact-us-form is missing) and I get to see the page as it is so far in the browser.

Only thing is Safari doesn’t load the styles and images. Chrome does. But that is not something the library can do something about I guess.

Great work, thank you very much!

Yep, that’s right!

Oh no that sounds like a bug, although I just switch my default browser to Safari and tried it locally with both a LiveView and controller test and saw styles in both cases. Do you mind logging an issue with your system info and all that? There isn’t any good reason it should fail in Safari

Thank you! The lib is thanks to the great work of @germsvel!

There isn’t a “good” reason indeed. It looked like all the paths were pointing to the correct locations. I’ll have another look today, and try it on another Mac as well.
And thanks to @germsvel indeed. I came for the asserts with more focused html snippets when they fail, and might be staying for open_browser and having the same style tests for live- and dead- views.

Love that people are using the library! And @sodapopcan is being modest. This open_browser was all his doing. And I love that it works with non-LiveView pages. It’s sooo cool to have a feature that isn’t available any other way!