Webdriverio: Change implementation of get* wdio commands

Hello

In our project we override wdio command getText and add new command getTexts:

getText.js

'use strict';

let assert = require('assert');

/**
 * @alias browser.getText
 * @param {String} selector
 * @returns {String}
 */

let _getText = browser.getText;

browser.addCommand('getText', function (selector) {
    let result = _getText.apply(browser, arguments);

    if (Array.isArray(result)) {
        throw new assert.AssertionError({
            message: 'Found several elements, expected one',
            expected: 'One item on page',
            actual: 'Several elements',
        });
    }

    return result;
}, true);

getTexts.js

'use strict';

/**
 * @alias browser.getTexts
 * @param {String} selector
 * @returns {String[]}
 */

let _getText = browser.getText;

browser.addCommand('getTexts', function (selector) {
    let result = _getText.apply(browser, arguments);

    if (!Array.isArray(result)) {
        return [result];
    }

    return result;
});

This helped us avoid such hacks as this one.

My proposal

I have a proposal to change all of these methods in a similar way:

• getText(s)
• getValue(s)
• getAttribute(s)
• getTagName(s)
• getCssProperty(ies)

I want to do this because this expedient looks like a hack and very often occurs in our tests. What do you think about this?

Use cases:

When a developer writes a test, most often he wants to get the text of some particular element on the page (by the selector):

...
const header = browser.getText('h1');
assert.equals(header, 'Hello here!');
...

But now we have to do checks like this in each test:

...
const header = browser.getText('h1');
assert(Array.isArray(header), 'We have more than one `h1` header on the page!');
assert.equals(header, 'Hello here!');
...

On the other hand, when we have on the page, for example, a list of elements and want to get the contents of the elements of this list, we expect to get an array of strings:

...
const emails = browser.getText('.address-book');
assert.equals(emails.length, 1);
...

But in this situation the method getText behaves strangely and unexpectedly. Now we have to do checks like this in each test:

...
let emails = browser.getText('.address-book');
if (!Array.isArray(emails)) { emails = [emails] }
assert.equals(emails.length, 1);
...

What can we do about this problem?

Firstly, we can do such checks in each test. But this is a very unsuitable option.
The second option — is to override getText and other similar commands in all projects where we use tests. But this method has two important drawbacks:

• When the developer first sees the new method, he opens the documentation for wdio and sees an incorrect description
• We will not have IDE support for overridden methods

It would be much more convenient and clearer to have a similar functional in the core API.