getLocationAbsUrl() does not (always) return $location.absUrl()

[gkalpak]

Bug report

• Protractor Version: 3.3.0

• A relevant example test

  browser.get('http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api');
  expect(browser.getLocationAbsUrl()).toBe('http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api');

• Output from running the test

  Expected /api to equal 'http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api'.

As seen in protractor.ts#L864-L869 and clientsidescripts.js#L651-L658, the return value of getLocationAbsUrl() is different when angular.getTestability is available and most importantly it is not the absUrl (in the $location sense).

Basically, when angular.getTestability is not available, $location.absUrl() is returned (which is the expected behavior). But when angular.getTestability is available (i.e. since AngularJS v1.3.0-rc.0 - see angular.js#85880a6), $location.url() is returned instead (because that is what $$testability returns).

This is the case since at least Protractor v1.1.1 (see 0e9c2f4).

Returning $location.url() from a function named getLocationAbsUrl() isn't very intuitive, but this has been the case for a long time. For the next breaking release, it might be a good idea to expose two methods (on Protractor and $$testability) to retrieve both the .url() and the .absUrl(), e.g. getLocationUrl() and getLocationAbsUrl().

[juliemr]

Yeah, this one's got an ugly history. See #3097 and #778

Is there a reason you can't use getCurrentUrl? We should really be discouraging getLocationAbsUrl.

Agree with potentially breaking for sanity at next breaking release.

[gkalpak]

No reason I can't use getCurrentUrl (except I am not sure it works on IE).

Basically, I think that (for Angular pages) getLocationUrl() (returning $location.url()) would be the most useful one (and in fact that is what getLocationAbsUrl() currently returns).

I reported this mostly because (1) the documentation is wrong and/or (2) the behavior is unexpected (i.e. the returned value doesn't match the name). I wasn't sure though how it should be best handled.

[bbaia]

Introduced by commit 0e9c2f4, why don't you remove the lines added in getLocationAbsUrl until it's supported in $$testability ?

[gkalpak]

@bbaia, the problem is not with fixing this (it's easy to change $$testability) - the problem is that it's a breaking change (i.e. people will have to update their currently working tests).

[sjelin]

I say we deprecate it: add a logger.warn and some scary comments in the docs.