How to check if text is found in column in Protractor - protractor

Question

I'm trying to assert that a name is displayed in a column of a table. I've written an inResults function that will iterate through a column's text to see if a name exists. Here's what I'm trying:
Page object:
this.names = element.all(by.repeater('row in rows').column('{{row}}'));
this.inResults = function(nameString) {
var foundit = '';
this.names.each(function(name) {
name.getText().then(function(it) {
console.log(it); // each name IS printed...
if(it == nameString) {
console.log('it\'s TRUE!!!!'); // this gets printed...
foundit = true;
}
});
});
return foundit; // returns '' but should be true?
};
Spec expect:
expect(friendPage.inResults('Jo')).toBeTruthy();
Both console statements print as expected... but my expect fails as foundit's value is still ''. I've tried this a number of ways and none are working. What am I missing?

Answer 1

I've devised what I think is a better/cleaner way to solve this. It's less complex and doesn't require locator/css code in the method.
friend.page.js
// locator
this.friendName = function(text) { return element.all(by.cssContainingText('td.ng-binding', text)) };
// method
this.inResults = function(name) {
return this.friendName(name).then(function(found) {
return found.length > 0;
});
};
friend.spec.js
expect(friendPage.inResults('Jo')).toBeTruthy();
I've added this to my protractor_example project on GitHub...

Answer 2

I would recommend you to use filter: http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api?view=ElementArrayFinder.prototype.filter
this.inResults = function(nameString) {
return this.names.filter(function(name) {
return name.getText().then(function(text) {
return text === nameString;
});
}).then(function(filteredElements) {
// Only the elements that passed the filter will be here. This is an array.
return filteredElements.length > 0;
});
});
// This will be a promise that resolves to a boolean.
expect(friendPage.inResults('Jo')).toBe(true);

Answer 3

Use map to do this.This will return a deferred that will resolve with the values in an array, so if you have this:
this.mappedVals =element.all(by.repeater('row in rows').column('{{row}}')).map(function (elm) {
return elm.getText();
});
It will resolve like this:
this.inResults = function(nameString) {
var foundit = '';
mappedVals.then(function (textArr) {
// textArr will be an actual JS array of the text from each node in your repeater
for(var i=0; i<textArr.length; i++){
if(it == textArr[i]) {
console.log('it\'s TRUE!!!!'); // this gets printed...
foundit = true;
}
}
return foundit;
});
}
And Use that in Spec file like,
friendPage.inResults('Jo').then(function(findIt){
expect(findIt).toBeTruthy();
});