Simplifying multiple boolean checks into a single one

Question

In one of our tests, we have the following set of expectations:

expect(headerPage.dashboard.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
expect(headerPage.queue.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
expect(headerPage.claimSearch.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
expect(headerPage.claim.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
expect(headerPage.case.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
expect(headerPage.calendar.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);

On one hand, having multiple simple expectations provide a more precise and understandable feedback, but, on another, this looks like it violates the DRY principle and the "one expectation per test" commonly acceptable guideline.

Is there a way to convert/simplify it to a single expect?

---

^{headerPage is a Page Object, dashboard and other page object fields are navigation links.}

Answer 1

I think you've misunderstood the purpose of the "one expectation per test" guideline. The point isn't to combine a bunch of expectations into a single expectation, it's to split up your expectations into separate tests.

To follow the spirit of that guideline, you would write your tests like this:

describe("The header page", function () {
    var headerPage;
    beforeEach(function () {
        //Common logic here
    });

    it("displays the dashboard", function () {
        expect(headerPage.dashboard.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
    });

    it("displays the queue", function () {
        expect(headerPage.queue.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
    });

    it("displays the claimSearch", function () {
        expect(headerPage.claimSearch.isDisplayed()).toBe(true);
    });

    //etc.
});

That's a fair bit more verbose than what you have; but that's why these are guidelines not rules. It's a tradeoff between how verbose you make your tests, versus how easy they are to debug later. ("The header page displays the dashboard: FAILED") is a very clear and specific test failure message, compared to getting the same failure message regardless of which expectation actually failed.

I definitely would not try to combine all of these lines into a single line. If you don't want to split it into a bunch of different test cases I would just leave it how it is.

Answer 2

Alternative approach. What I've ended up with was to add a page object method that returns the labels of the currently visible navigation links:

this.getVisibleLinks = function () {
    return $$(".ap-header-nav-tabs li a").filter(function (link) {
        return link.isDisplayed();
    }).getText();
};

Then, the above test would be transformed to a concise and readable:

expect(headerPage.getVisibleLinks()).toEqual(["Dashboard", "Queue", "Claim Search", ...]);