Using PhantomJS with Karma (Win7 x64)

Question

Does anyone have a simple getting started guide on how to configure Karma to use PhantomJS?

Using the phonecat sample, I have Karma running with Chrome fine and although the Karma docs mention PhantomJS (which I now have installed) I can't figure out how to amend the config file to get it to run.

I've tried putting PhantomJS in the the browsers array of testacular.conf.js but I get;

 { [Error: spawn OK] code: 'OK', errno: 'OK', syscall: 'spawn' }

Which I think means it's launching OK but it appears to me that (as a PhantomJS noob) it requires a different command line. I've also downloaded phantomjs-launcher but it's not obvious how to use that.

(I'm running Windows 7 64-Bit if that makes a difference.)

test.bat

@echo off

REM Windows script for running unit tests
REM You have to run server and capture some browser first
REM
REM Requirements:
REM -NodeJS (http://nodejs.org/)
REM -Testacular (npm install -g karma)

set BASE_DIR= % ~dp0
karma start "%BASE_DIR%\..\config\testacular.conf.js" %*

testacular.conf.js

basePath = '../';

files =[
  JASMINE,
  JASMINE_ADAPTER,
  'app/lib/angular/angular.js',
  'app/lib/angular/angular-*.js',
  'test/lib/angular/angular-mocks.js',
  'app/js/**/*.js',
  'test/unit/**/*.js'
];

autoWatch = true;

browsers =['Chrome', 'phantomjs'];

junitReporter = {
    outputFile: 'test_out/unit.xml',
    suite: 'unit'
};

According to procmon.exe PhantomJS wasn't launching at all, so to circumvent environmental issues, I've since amended my config thus;

browsers = ['Chrome','%USERPROFILE%\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\phantomjs.cmd'];

where %userprofile% is expanded, which seems to launch it, but now I get this;

INFO [launcher]: Starting browser %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\phantomjs.cmd
ERROR [launcher]: Cannot start %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\npm\phantomjs.cmd
        Can't open 'http://localhost:9876/?id=16572367'

events.js:72
        throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
          ^
Error: spawn OK
    at errnoException (child_process.js:975:11)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:766:34)

That error seems to be coming from PhantomJS.exe now.

Solution 1

First, install PhantomJS using npm:

npm install -g phantomjs

You may then need to specify the location of the PhantomJS executable for karma. The npm install will tell you where it put the executable. For me, running karma in Git Bash, I added the following to ~/.profile:

export PHANTOMJS_BIN ='C:/Users/JohnSmith/AppData/Roaming/npm/node_modules/phantomjs/lib/phantom/phantomjs.exe'`

Those two steps, plus adding PhantomJS to the browsers entry, were sufficient to get karma to successfully invoke Phantom and run all of my tests.

Solution 2

Use PhantomJS launcher and set env PHANTOMJS_BIN to the correct location of your phantomjs binary. That is phantomjs.exe on windows, not the .cmd file (the cmd file is just a npm wrapper on windows).

In your code, you are using a script browser launcher (a custom shell script to launch a browser). That is possible, but the script has to accept a single argument which is the url that it should open. PhantomJS does not behave like that.

Solution 3

I was seeing this error when using a relative path in node's child_process.spawn() function --

var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
var child = spawn('phantomjs', ['./suspendmonitors.js']);

The solution for me was to use the absolute path:

var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
var child = spawn('phantomjs', ['C:/Users/kkhalsa/workspace/misc_scripts/phantomjs/suspendmonitors.js']);

For some reason, the relative path worked when calling the node script from a windows command prompt, but didn't when invoking the node script in Windows powershell.

Comments

[cirrus]

No luck. I missed the npm install step previously, I'd downloaded it instead so I thought that might be it. The first time it ran though it complained of a port collision at 9100 but every time after that I just got the same error as before.

[S McCrohan]

Show us your karma config file, I guess?

[cirrus]

Added. Nothing special there I don't think?

[Vojta]

Also note that in the upcoming version of Karma (0.10), launchers are separate plugins and karma-phantomjs-launcher uses phantomjs installed from NPM, so you actually don't need to do anything and it should just work, even on the great OS called Windows ;-)