Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient when JS errors are thrown

[pfleidi]

Hello,

Some days ago one of our tests using poltergeist started to fail with Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient errors.

Here's the code causing the error:

  within(:css, "form#node-type-form") do
    fill_in("name", :with => content_type)
    fill_in("description", :with => description)
    click_button("edit-submit")
  end

And here's the shell output:

      The PhantomJS client died while processing {"args":[2,3],"name":"click"} (Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient)
      (eval):2:in `send'
      (eval):2:in `click_button'
      ./features/step_definitions/content_creation_steps.rb:17
      ./features/step_definitions/content_creation_steps.rb:14:in `/^I create a content type named ["']([^"']+)["'] with description ["']([^"']+)["']$/'
      features/fivestar.feature:24:in `And I create a content type named "fivestar-01" with description "fivestar type"'

My current setup looks like this:

• Ruby 1.8.7
• Cucumber (1.2.1)
• Capybara (1.1.3)
• Poltergeist (1.0.2)
• PhantomJS 1.8.1

I am running my tests on OS X 10.8 and Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS. The js_errors option is set to false:

  options = {
    :js_errors => false,
    :window_size => [1280, 768],
    :debug => true
  }

After debugging the problem a bit more, I found out that a JS error is thrown when loading the site:

{"args"=>["http:/my.site/path"], "name"=>"visit"}
{"error"=>{"args"=>[[{"stack"=>"TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'jQuery.timeago.settings')\n    at http://my.site/sites/all/modules/timeago/timeago.js?mgexlw:13", "message"=>"TypeError: 'undefined' is not an object (evaluating 'jQuery.timeago.settings')"}]], "name"=>"Poltergeist.JavascriptError"}}
Capybara::Poltergeist::JavascriptError
{"args"=>[".//body[contains(concat(' ', @class, ' '), ' logged-in ')]"], "name"=>"find"}
{"response"=>{"ids"=>[0], "page_id"=>1}}

After fixing the JS error, the test started working again. So the crash is probably caused by the uncaught error.

I also created a a crashdump of phantomJS.

It currently looks like phantomJS dies after encountering a JS error when js_error is set to false.

[jonleighton]

Do you get the error on the Ubuntu machine? If so please could you create a crash dump from there?

[pfleidi]

@jonleighton: Yes, a similar error occurred on the Ubuntu machine. Here's the crash report.

[jonleighton]

Can you try current master? js_errors: false was pretty broken before today.

[enricostano]

Same problem here on ArchLinux and :js_errors => false

{"name"=>"find", "args"=>[".//input[@id = 'submit']"]}
{"response"=>{"page_id"=>2, "ids"=>[2]}}
{"name"=>"click", "args"=>[2, 2]}
poltergeist [1363177956214] state default -> clicked
poltergeist [1363177956226] state clicked -> loading
PhantomJS has crashed. Please read the crash reporting guide at https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/wiki/Crash-Reporting and file a bug report at https://code.google.com/p/phantomjs/issues/entry with the crash dump file attached: /tmp/7847aeeb-48ea-0700-2d748465-3f4a658d.dmp
{"name"=>"set_debug", "args"=>[true]}

The weird thing is that if I pause the test just before "hitting" the submit input waiting like a couple of seconds and then going ahead it works...

[olivierlacan]

@enricostano Still having this issue on ArchLinux? Having it on Ubuntu.

[enricostano]

sorry @olivierlacan , I gave up on this. Not using Poltergeist anymore. 😞

[olivierlacan]

Ditto. I don't blame Poltergeist to be fair. I blame PhantomJS.

[pixelpax]

This is frustrating. I'm having the same problem and I'm using PhantomJS 1.9.8

How do they not have this fixed?

What are you guys using instead now?

[constantm]

We're still getting this randomly on tests running on Semaphore. Not happening on local OSX dev machines.

[mois3x]

This is weird... still happening randomly when it is used on Rails 3, On rails 4 its ok.

[twalpole]

Can anyone provide a minimal example that reproduces the issue? Without that it's pretty hard to fix

[twalpole]

Closing this due to age, lack of details usable for debugging and the appearance of it most likely being an issue with older phantomjs -- If anyone has a reproducible test case using latest versions of poltergeist/phantomjs please open a new issue

[caseyprovost]

@twalpole I am seeing this issue still, hard to track down.

phantomjs 2.1.1
poltergeist (1.9.0)
capybara (2.5.0)

If you need more information I am happy to collaborate and send whatever you need to track this down.

[twalpole]

@caseyprovost - What we really need is a reproducible minimal test case

[Azrasyed]

@twalpole I'm facing the same issue. I'm trying to run my tests on Jenkins.

Scenario: Adding item to cart and checkout # features/web_checkout.feature:4
Given I am on the homepage # features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:12
And I submit the registration portal with valid credentials # features/step_definitions/signup.rb:1
Account successfully created
PhantomJS has crashed. Please read the bug reporting guide at
http://phantomjs.org/bug-reporting.html and file a bug report.
And I submit the password portal with valid credentials # features/step_definitions/signup.rb:21
PhantomJS client died while processing {"id":"5b507f23-6bf4-409b-8a68-5fed2edcaa2b","name":"body","args":[]} (Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient)

[twalpole]

@Azrasyed As stated before -- what we need is a reproducible test case using phantomjs 2.1.1+ -- without that there really is no way for us to figure out whats going on.

[cmthakur]

@jonleighton @twalpole I'm facing the same issue. I'm trying to run my tests on Jenkins.
My scenarios are same as @Azrasyed, and Gemfile looks like this.

phantomjs (2.1.1.0)
poltergeist (1.9.0)
      capybara (~> 2.1)
      cliver (~> 0.3.1)
      multi_json (~> 1.0)
      websocket-driver (>= 0.2.0)

Error looks like this:

Capybara::Poltergeist::DeadClient:
       PhantomJS client died while processing {"id":"5d43dca7-add2-4280-8192-2ae0cadc15d5","name":"visit","args":["http://localhost:9887/admin/likeman/246/edit",90]}
      # /var/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/poltergeist-1.9.0/lib/capybara/poltergeist/server.rb:38:in `send'
     # /var/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/poltergeist-1.9.0/lib/capybara/poltergeist/browser.rb:344:in `command'
     # /var/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/poltergeist-1.9.0/lib/capybara/poltergeist/browser.rb:34:in `visit'
     # /var/bundle/ruby/2.3.0/gems/poltergeist-1.9.0/lib/capybara/poltergeist/driver.rb:95:in `visit'

[volkanunsal]

I came across this issue as well. Here is the dump file of the error.

[cmthakur]

@jonleighton @twalpole The issue resolved by increasing poltergeist timeout value.

  options = {
              js_errors: false,
              extensions: [],
              phantomjs_options:['--proxy-type=none', '--load-images=no', '--ignore-ssl-errors=true'],
              timeout: 180,
              window_size: ['1300', '1800'],
              inspector: true,
            }

[volkanunsal]

@cmthakur My timeout is 1000 and still seeing this issue.

[constantm]

We've done the following and it seems to have helped tremendously with random errors and memory use when running tests:

# spec/spec_helper.rb
config.after :each do |example|
  page.driver.restart if defined?(page.driver.restart)
end

This resets PhantomJS completely after each test and has no noticeable performance impact.

[cmthakur]

@jonleighton @twalpole can you try this in spec_helper.rb, it works for me.

   config.after(:each) do
      Capybara.reset_sessions!
      DatabaseCleaner.clean
   end

In capybara.rb

Capybara.register_driver :poltergeist_debug do |app|
  options = {
              js_errors: false,
              extensions: [],
              phantomjs_options:['--proxy-type=none', '--load-images=no', '--ignore-ssl-errors=true'],
              timeout: 180,
              window_size: ['1300', '1800'],
              inspector: true,
            }
  Capybara::Poltergeist::Driver.new(app, options)

[justin808]

It seems like the key thing is that js_errors: false.

I get crashes otherwise in #830.

[bradens]

Oh my god @constantm you helped me a lot with the trick to restart the driver after each test..been battling unreliable phantomjs crashes for weeks! cheers!

[dxypher]

Still happening in CircleCI.
Already had js_errors: false, and tried @constantm solution...but no luck.

Difficult to provide steps to reproduce as it happens intermittently and the specs that fail aren't always the same ones.

Update:

Noticed similar issue back in 2012...related to people who'd upgraded to a newer version of Bootstrap.

I also started seeing this issue when I upgraded to Bootstrap 4 alpha-6

[MatzFan]

Restarting the driver, as per @constantm fixed the problem for me (which was caused by forking in my code) but there was a performance hit: ~0.19s on my machine.

[srish]

In my case only some test cases were problematic, and so it wasn't necessary to include the changes in the spec_helper.rb to driver restart after every test case. Building on @constantm's solution, adding the snippet within a context block worked:

context 'user logged in' do
    before(:each) do
        page.driver.restart if defined?(page.driver.restart)
    end
end