Cannot decode JSON from PhantomJS runner: can't convert nil into String

[thbar]

I noticed by experimenting that if you provide a CoffeeScript class instead of a string as a first param of describe (although it's not supposed to be supported! But I'm new to this, so please bear with me), going to the browser at /jasmine will happily report failures properly (just with an empty description), while guard-jasmine will choke on the JSON parsing, and only when errors happen.

Here's an example json (trimmed down):

{
    "passed": false, 
    "stats": {
        "failures": 1, 
        "specs": 7, 
        "time": 0.017
    }, 
    "suites": [
        {
            ## missing description key here, which I suspect leads to the exception ##
            "passed": false, 
            "specs": [
                {
                    "description": "excludes that", 
                    "messages": [
                        "Expected 5 to equal 4."
                    ], 
                    "passed": false
                }
            ], 
            "suites": []
        }, 
        {
            "description": "A string is passed here and this one works ok", 
            "passed": true, 
            "specs": [
            ...
            ], 
            "suites": []
        }
    ]
}

This only happens when you have failures in the specs.

Suggestion: we could maybe default to an empty description instead of this exception, to be consistent with the behaviour seen in the browser?

What do you think?

[netzpirat]

Just did a quick check in two projects of mine that are using guard-jasmine and if I use a CoffeeScript class as description in the describe function, then the Jasmine HTML runner fails with 'Uncaught Error: NOT_FOUND_ERR: DOM Exception 8' and the Guard Jasmine runner fails with a timeout ('ERROR: An error occurred: Timeout waiting for the Jasmine test results!').

Even when it would behave like you've described, I'm not sure if it's a good idea to catch the missing description, because it's a wrong usage of Jasmine. But on the other side, it doesn't harm and may help, so why not?

[thbar]

Hey - that was quick :)

But on the other side, it doesn't harm and may help, so why not?

My thoughts exactly (plus it provides a consistent experience with what going to /jasmine to see the runner provides).

Thanks for your patch!

[thbar]

Woops - I read your comment too quickly on the html runner! Unsure why the difference in behaviour; but yes I guess it doesn't matter much. Thanks!