Should I commit the suggested locator from a heal log, or go and find out why?

Asked 14 Sept 20228,110 views2 answers

22votes

Our log has been telling us this for a fortnight:

text

healed "login button": locator('#login-button') → getByRole('button', { name: 'Login' }) via role (score 1.00, 3180 ms). Update the page object.

I cannot tell whether "update the page object" means "paste this in" or "go and find out why". The suggestion is obviously better than the id we had. But if I paste it in, the heal context still lists role: 'button', name: 'Login', so the primary and the fallback become the same thing, which feels wrong.

heal page-objects locators

asked by Sam Orbison9,420 · 14 Sept 2022

2 answers

20votes
Paste it in, then re-derive the context around the new primary. You are right that a context duplicating the primary is dead weight — if the primary is getByRole('button', { name: 'Login' }) then the useful context is the id you just retired, plus the test id:
ts
```
readonly submit = this.heal.locator(this.page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Login' }), {
  testId: 'login-button', text: 'Login', description: 'login button',
});
```
The rule of thumb is that the context should describe the element the way a different team would find it, not the way you already did.
Do go and find out why as well, but the answer is usually boring: somebody replaced a hand-written id with a component library and nobody told the tests.
answered by Tomas Brekkemaintainer33,915 · 16 Sept 2022
11votes
We treat the log line as a code review comment rather than a patch. Three of ours were the healer being right. One was the healer finding a visually identical button in a modal that happened to be open, and committing that would have made a genuinely wrong test permanently green.
The score does not tell you it picked the element you meant, only that it picked one element confidently. Look at pageUrl and description on the event before you take the suggestion.
answered by Owen Brackley144 · 16 Sept 2022

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Should I commit the suggested locator from a heal log, or go and find out why?

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