getLocationAbsUrl vs getCurrentUrl

GitHub source for getCurrentUrl

webdriver.WebDriver.prototype.getCurrentUrl = function() {  return this.schedule(      new webdriver.Command(webdriver.CommandName.GET_CURRENT_URL),      'WebDriver.getCurrentUrl()');};

Uses the schedule() -> command() wrappers to resolve a promise from WebDriver.getCurrentUrl()

GitHub source for Protractor.getLocationAbsUrl

functions.getLocationAbsUrl = function(selector) {  var el = document.querySelector(selector);  if (angular.getTestability) {    return angular.getTestability(el).        getLocation();  }  return angular.element(el).injector().get('$location').absUrl();};

Simply a wrapper around $location.absUrl() with a wait for the AngularJS library to load

Current URL vs Absolute URL

given app URL:

http://www.example.com/home/index.html#/Home

Current URL resolves to more of a URI

/home/index.html#/Home

Absolute URL resolves to

http://www.example.com/home/index.html#/Home

When do you want to use absolute URL: You want to use the Full Domain URL, rather than the local navigation (URI), you want the Absolute URL.

• If your application makes calls for the Current URL, your tests should call getCurrentUrl().

• If your code makes requests for Absolute URL, your tests should call getLocationAbsUrl().

As stated previously the getLocationAbsUrl - returns a full path to the current location.browser.get('http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api');expect(browser.getLocationAbsUrl()) .toBe('http://angular.github.io/protractor/#/api');

The getCurrentUrl is utilized in a promise (schedule) to retrieve the URL of the current page. Typically, you would only use the getCurrentUrl when scheduling.

webdriver.WebDriver.prototype.getCurrentUrl = function(){ return this.schedule(new webdriver.Command(webdriver.CommandName.GET_CURRENT_URL),'WebDriver.getCurrentUrl()');}

Basically they should do the same thing, return the URL of the page.

From this bug report:

https://github.com/angular/protractor/issues/132

it seems that IEDriver for Selenium was always returning the first loaded page, not the current one. So the protractor team implemented a JS call to Angular's $location to always return the URL correctly via Javascript, not Webdriver protocol.