Why can't my Capybara/Poltergeist test select from a jQuery autocomplete field?

Question

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UPDATE: I have fixed this problem after lots of painstaking work on my own. I am happy to be a resource to anybody needing a hand with this. Here is a gist of my working setup.

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I have tried every solution I could find Google and SO. Here are some different things I have tried:

page.execute_script %Q{$('#{selector}').val('#{value}').trigger('keydown')}

and

fill_in field, with: options[:with]
page.execute_script %Q{ $('##{field}').trigger('focus') }
page.execute_script %Q{ $('##{field}').trigger('keydown') }

This is what fails:

page.should have_selector('ul.ui-autocomplete li.ui-menu-item a')

But it's definitely there when I look at it in Firebug and test it in the browser.

Here are all of the details, including a restatement of those above. Remember, the autocomplete field works fine in the browser.

listing_integration_spec.rb

require "spec_helper"

describe "Listing Integration" do

  let!(:user) { login_user }

  it "lets a user add information listing", js: true do
    listing = create(:listing, user: user)
    click_link('Additional Information')
    click_link('Create')
    fill_autocomplete('listings_search', with: listing.item_id)
  end

end

spec/support/feature_helper.rb

def fill_autocomplete(field, options = {})
  fill_in field, with: options[:with]
  page.execute_script %Q{ $('##{field}').trigger('focus') }
  page.execute_script %Q{ $('##{field}').trigger('keydown') }
  selector = %Q{ul.ui-autocomplete li.ui-menu-item a:contains('#{options[:with]}')}
  page.should have_selector('ul.ui-autocomplete li.ui-menu-item a')
  page.execute_script %Q{ $("##{selector}").trigger('mouseenter').click() }
end

ERB from view template

<%= simple_fields_for :listings  do |f| %>
  <%= f.input :search, label: "Search by Listing", required: true %>
<% end %>

and the Coffeescript:

$("#listings_search").autocomplete
  source: (request, response) ->
    options = 
      term: request.term
    $.get "/search_listings", options, (data) ->
      if data.length == 0
        alert "No listings found."
      response data
  minLength: 2
  select: (event, ui) ->
    add_listing_hash = 
      type: "GET"
      url: "/add_listing"
      data: { id: ui.item.id }
      success: () ->
    $.ajax(add_listing_hash)

Answer 1

JS drivers are generally meh, they're slow and not single one of them covers 100% of function, and they're often quirky and hard to debug, but I'm sure you've got that figured out by now.

I've got similar piece of code working on rails 3.2, minitest and poltergeist 1.3.0 (an ajaxed dropdown) but it kind of breaks periodically for no good reason (one might say it has a poltergeist? I have already resorted switching that test between selenium and poltergeist a couple times so far), not sure why autocompleter wouldn't work for you but it feels like a bug,

submit issue to https://github.com/jonleighton/poltergeist (you already have? https://github.com/jonleighton/poltergeist/issues/439), try changing to selenium or webkit, see if it works, you can use a different driver in this one test if it gets you out of the woods (it beats losing days of work over a widget that works).