common-issues-debugging.md

Common Issues & Debugging

These are some common issues which others have encountered whilst using the service.

If you need extra insight into what the service is doing you can set the environment var DEBUG=wdio-electron-service to enable debug logging, e.g.

$ DEBUG=wdio-electron-service wdio run ./wdio.conf.ts

This is utilising the debug logging package.

Error: ContextBridge not available for invocation of "app" API

When using Electron Forge or Electron Packager with Asar, it is possible that the wdio-electron-service module is not included in your generated app.asar. You can solve this, by either running the packager with the prune: false option or the --no-prune flag, or by moving "wdio-electron-service" from devDependencies to dependencies. It is recommend to do the former, for instance by passing an environment variable to the packager:

Electron Packager

$ npx electron-packager --no-prune

Electron Forge

package.json

{
  // ...
  "scripts": {
    // ...
    "package": "TEST=true electron-forge package"
    // ...
  }
  // ...
}

forge.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  packagerConfig: {
    asar: true,
    prune: process.env.TEST !== 'true',
  },
  // ...
};

DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist

This is a Chromium error which may appear when using Docker or CI. Most of the "fixes" discussed online are based around passing different combinations of args to Chromium - you can set these via appArgs, though in most cases using xvfb has proven to be more effective; the service itself uses xvfb when running E2Es on Linux CI.

See this discussion for more details.

Module not found: wdio-electron-service/preload

This is a result of the preload script not being found when trying to access the electron APIs via execute.

You should try disabling sandbox mode in your app as mentioned in the accessing APIs documentation.

Alternatively, if you are loading extensions into Electron, you should do that at the end of the "ready" event handler. Otherwise, chromedriver will attach to the first extension's background page.

See this discussion for more details.