javascript - Protractor set global variables

Question

I am trying to set a global variable on protractor to use in all describe blocks.

var glob = 'test';

describe('glob test', function () {
    it('should set glob', function () {
        browser.get('http://example.com/test');
        browser.executeScript(function () {
            window.glob = glob;
        });
    });    
});

But this returns me the following error:

Message:
[firefox #2]      UnknownError: glob is not defined

I also looked at this question: protractor angularJS global variables

so i tried to set the variable glob in conf.js in this way:

exports.config = {
  ...,
  onPrepare: function () {
      global.glob = 'test';
  }
};

Still, having the same error.

How can i add properly global variables in protractor tests?

Answer 1

It is possible to set globals from the Protractor config file with the help of params property:

exports.config = {
    // ...

    params: {
        glob: 'test'
    }

    // ...
};

And you can access it in the specs using browser.params.glob.

See the reference config file.

The params object will be passed directly to the Protractor instance, and can be accessed from your test as browser.params. It is an arbitrary object and can contain anything you may need in your test. This can be changed via the command line as:

protractor conf.js --params.glob 'other test'

Update:

From the docs for browser.executeScript:

If the script is provided as a function object, that function will be converted to a string for injection into the target window. Any arguments provided in addition to the script will be included as script arguments and may be referenced using the arguments object.

So, JavaScript scope in this case does not work, you function that is passed to browser.executeScript won't have any closure variables from spec like browser. But you can pass these variables explicitly:

browser.executeScript(function (glob) {

    // use passed variables on the page
    console.log(glob);

}, browser.params.glob);