Making ElementArrayFinder from an array of ElementFinders

Question

This is a follow-up question to Take elements while a condition evaluates to true (extending ElementArrayFinder) topic and @cvakiitho's answer in particular.

The problem:

After executing the following code:

var i = 0;
var el = element.all(by.css('ul li a'));
var tableItems = [];
(function loop() {
    el.get(i).getText().then(function(text){
        if(text){
            tableItems.push(el.get(i));
            i+=1;
            loop();
        }
    });
}());

tableItems would contain an array of ElementFinder instances - or, to put it simple - an array of web elements.

The Question:

Is it possible to convert an array of ElementFinders to an ElementArrayFinder instance?

The Motivation:

The reason I want this is to have all of the convenient ElementArrayFinder functional utilities, like map(), each(), reduce() and to be able to call getText() on it producing a promise which would resolve into an array of element texts.

Answer 1

Constructor of ElementArrayFinder basically requires two main arguments: protractor instance and a function getWebElements, which should return a promise resolving to an array of Web Elements. As soon as every ElementFinder has a method to get it's Web Element called getWebElement, it is possible to create such a function.

var arrayOfElementFinders = [el1, el2, el3];

var getWebElements = function () {

    // create array of WebElements from array of ElementFinders
    var webElements = arrayOfElementFinders.map(function (ef) {
        return ef.getWebElement();
    });

    // immediately resolve and return promise
    return protractor.promise.fulfilled(webElements);
};

Now when all requirements are satisfied, it is possible to create a new instance of ElementArrayFinder:

var elArrayFinder = new protractor.ElementArrayFinder(protractor, getWebElements);

To make it easy to use I would add a static method to ElementArrayFinder constructor and include it somewhere before tests start:

protractor.ElementArrayFinder.fromArray = function (arrayOfElementFinders) {
    var getWebElements = function () {
        var webElements = arrayOfElementFinders.map(function (ef) {
            return ef.getWebElement();
        })
        return protractor.promise.fulfilled(webElements);
    };
    return new protractor.ElementArrayFinder(protractor, getWebElements);
};

And use it in tests like:

var elArrayFinder = protractor.ElementArrayFinder.fromArray(arrayOfElementFinders);