Using angular functions ($q) in protractor - angularjs

Question

I want to use the $q service of angular in my e2e tests. (I want to get the texts of a bunch of elements via getText() which returns a promise. After all promises are resolved, I want to test the list. So I want to use $q.all() etc.)
angular.injector(['myApp']).get('$q'); results in "ReferenceError: angular is not defined"
Installing angular via node and then var angular = require("angularjs"); results in "Error: Cannot find module 'angular'"
Also, inserting a browser.waitForAngular() does not help there.
Using the inject(function($q) {}) syntax has the same problem.
How can I use such angular functions in protractor?
edit:
Here's the very naive version of what I want to achieve
var collectEntries = function(containers) {
var entries = {};
containers.each(function (container) {
var title = container.element(by.tagName('h2'));
title.getText().then(function (text) {
var key = getSomeKey();
var entry = processEntry(text);
entries[key] = entry;
});
});
return entries;
};
That works in principle, at some point in time entries contains all data. However, I need to wait for that moment. What I would do is create and return a promise that gets resolved as soon as all getText promises are resolved.
e.g.
var deferred = $q.defer();
$q.all(getTextPromises).then(function () {
deferred.resolve(entries);
});
return deferred.promise;

Answer 1

From the looks of your code containers is a list of elementFinders? (i.e. var containers = [element(by.x), element(by.y), element(by.z)]):
Using q: (you need to add q as dependency in package.json first)
var q = require('q');
var collectEntries = function(containers) {
var entries = {};
containers.each(function (container) {
var deferred = q.defer();
var title = container.element(by.tagName('h2'));
title.getText().then(function (text) {
deferred.resolve(processEntry(text));
});
entries[getSomeKey()] = deferred.promise();
});
return q.all(entries);
};
expect(collectEntries).toBe({key1: 'title1', key2: 'title2'})
But protractor knows promise itself (and it's preferably that you don't mix protractor's promise with q promise unless you know what you're doing):
var collectEntries = function(containers) {
var entries = {};
containers.each(function (container) {
entries[getSomeKey()] = container.element(by.tagName('h2')).
getText().then(function (text) {
return processEntry(text);
});
});
return protractor.promise.fullyResolved(entries);
};
expect(collectEntries).toBe({key1: 'title1', key2: 'title2'})
If your containers are found using a single selector (i.e. var containers = element.all(by.xyz)), it's even easier:
var collectEntries = function(containers) {
return containers.reduce(function(entries, elem) {
return elem.getText().then(function(text) {
entries[getSomeKey()] = processEntry(text);
return entries;
});
}, {});
};
expect(collectEntries).toBe({key1: 'title1', key2: 'title2'})