Hackathon 25.3: Four ways the browserless environment differs from a running application

Description

All four cost an afternoon each, and each one is silent: the test passes, or finds nothing, rather than saying that the thing it needs is not there.

1. Navigation cannot carry query parameters. navigate("track/ORD-1?t=abc", View.class) throws "Base path can not contain query separator", and navigate(Class, Map) is route parameters, not query parameters. The way through is UI.getCurrent().navigate(path, QueryParameters.of(...)) and then looking the view up.

2. Session scoped Spring beans cannot be injected. A @VaadinSessionScope bean autowired into a test class fails to resolve: there is no session at injection time. Reaching it through context.getBean(...) inside the test works.

3. The security context does not reach the view. @WithMockUser on the class is not enough, and the navigation the test sees is the anonymous one whoever it signed in as. A helper that signs in after the browserless environment is up is what works.

4. A PageTitleGenerator registered only as a bean is never applied. The title stays empty, so a test cannot assert what an application computes. With @DynamicPageTitle(Generator.class) on the view the tier does call it, so this is specifically the bean only path, which is the path an application falls into by accident: a generator annotated @Component becomes the whole application's title in a browser, and nothing at all in a test.

Why it matters

Each one reads as an application bug first. The security one is the worst: a test that signs in as an admin and sees the anonymous navigation looks like a broken security configuration, and the configuration is fine.

Expected

Anything that turns a silent difference into a message. For 1, accept the query string or name the overload in the exception. For 2 and 3, a documented order of setup, or support for the annotations that already exist. For 4, call the generator.

A "how the browserless environment differs" page would cover all four.

Reproduce

22-browserless-differences.zip, then mvn test. Two tests, and they say different things:

• navigationCannotCarryAQueryString passes: it documents the refusal, and that the tier wraps what the router throws, so the message is on the cause.
• aPageTitleGeneratorBeanReachesTheTitle fails, expected: <computed by the generator> but was: <>. That failure is the finding.

Differences 2 and 3 are not in the project: the first needs a session scoped bean and the second needs security wiring, and both are described above with what worked instead.

Found on 25.3.0-beta1 with browserless-test 1.2.0-alpha2.

Getting the project

22-browserless-differences.zip, 5 KB, sources only. Unzip it and:

mvn test

Unzip 22-browserless-differences.zip and run mvn test first; aPageTitleGeneratorBeanReachesTheTitle is the failing reproduction, while navigationCannotCarryAQueryString documents another behavior. Read the browserless-test navigation, session, security, and page-title integration points referenced by the reproductions. Done means the four differences are either supported or reported clearly through messages, documented setup, or a passing title-generator test.