Jasmine: Backbone.history.loadUrl Breaks Unrelated Tests - backbone.js

Question

I've found the only way to navigate to different URLs to do view and router behavior tests is to use Backbone.history.loadUrl(). Backbone.history.navigate('#something', true) and router.navigate('#something, {trigger: true, replace: true} and any combination thereof do not work within the test. My application does NOT use pushstate.
This works correctly within the context of a single test.
describe('that can navigate to something as expected', function(){
beforeEach(function() {
this.server = sinon.fakeServer.create();
//helper method does my responds to fetches, etc. My router in my app is what starts Backbone.history
this.router = initializeBackboneRouter(this.server, this.fixtures, false);
});
afterEach(function(){
this.server.restore();
Backbone.history.stop();
Backbone.history.loadUrl('#');
});
it('should create the view object', function(){
Backbone.history.loadUrl('#something');
expect(this.router.myView).toBeDefined();
});
});
During testing you can see that backbone is appending hashes as expected to the URL: localhost:8888/#something Depending on the test.
Unfortunately, loadUrl seems to be introducing a lot of inconsistencies in the way the tests behave. During one of my tests that involves some asynchronous JS where I need to wait for an AJAX call to complete, the fails about 50% of the time with a timeout or sometimes Expected undefined to be defined. If I console out the data I expect to be there it is, so I know it's not a BS test.
it('should add the rendered html to the body', function(){
runs(function(){
Backbone.history.loadUrl('#something');
});
waitsFor(function(){
var testEl = $('#title');
if(testEl.length > 0){ return true; }
}, 1000, 'UI to be set up');
runs(function(){
var testEl = $('#title');
expect(testEl.text()).toEqual(this.router.model.get(0).title);
});
});
The important note here is that it only fails when all tests are run; run by itself it passes 100% of the time.
My question then is: is Backbone.history.loadUrl a bad way to do programatic navigation around a backbone app in jasmine? I feel like I've tried everything to get this to simulate a user going to a specific URL. Is my teardown incorrect? I've tried it without the Backbone.history.loadUrl('#'); and got different behavior but not passing tests.
The core problem seems to be that in the context of several, hundreds, or even a few jasmine tests, Backbone.history is not clearing itself out and is sticking around as one instance of itself instead of being completely re-initialized at each test.

Answer 1

This sucked.
The solution was to edit my code a bit to add a loading complete flag that was set to true when i was sure that the DOM was 100% finished loading.
Then I wrote a helper function that waited for that flag to be true in my beforeEach function in the root of each test.
var waitForLoadingComplete = function(view){
waitsFor(function(){
if(view.loadingComplete == true){return true;}
}, 100, 'UI Setup Finished');
}
After that I refactored my setup into a helper function:
var setupViewTestEnvironment = function(options) {
var temp = {};
temp.server = sinon.fakeServer.create();
temp.router = initializeBackboneRouter(temp.server, options.fixture);
waitForLoadingComplete(temp.router.initialview);
runs(function(){
Backbone.history.loadUrl(options.url);
temp.view = temp.router[options.view];
temp.model = temp.router[options.model];
waitForLoadingComplete(temp.view);
});
return temp;
}
Example use:
beforeEach(function() {
this.testEnv = setupViewTestEnvironment({
url: '#profile',
view: 'profileIndex',
model: 'myModel',
fixture: this.fixtures
});
});
After which I had a view that i had loaded which I could be assured was finished loading so I could test stuff on the DOM or anything else I wanted to do.