This is basically a follow-up to Remove timeout for single jasmine spec github issue.

The question:

Is it possible to make a single test never timeout?

The problem:

It is possible to set a timeout value globally via DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL or for every describe with beforeEach/afterEach or on a single it() block:

it('Has a custom timeout', function() {
  expect(true).toBeTruthy();
}, value in msec)

I'm interested in having a single spec never timeout. I've tried to follow the advice proposed in the mentioned github issue and use Infinity:

it('Has a custom timeout', function() {
  expect(true).toBeTruthy();
}, Infinity)

but, I've got the following error immediately after the tests got into the it() block:

Error: Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within timeout specified by jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL

I guess I cannot use Infinity as a timeout value, or I'm doing something wrong.

As a workaround, I can use a hardcoded large number instead, but I'd like to avoid that.

This is basically a follow-up to Remove timeout for single jasmine spec github issue.

The question:

Is it possible to make a single test never timeout?

The problem:

It is possible to set a timeout value globally via DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL or for every describe with beforeEach/afterEach or on a single it() block:

it('Has a custom timeout', function() {
  expect(true).toBeTruthy();
}, value in msec)

I'm interested in having a single spec never timeout. I've tried to follow the advice proposed in the mentioned github issue and use Infinity:

it('Has a custom timeout', function() {
  expect(true).toBeTruthy();
}, Infinity)

but, I've got the following error immediately after the tests got into the it() block:

Error: Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within timeout specified by jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL

I guess I cannot use Infinity as a timeout value, or I'm doing something wrong.

As a workaround, I can use a hardcoded large number instead, but I'd like to avoid that.

• javascript
• testing
• jasmine
• protractor

• Out of curiosity, what is the use case for having a spec which never times out? – finspin Commented Sep 1, 2015 at 19:41
• @finspin that's a good question. I have a long running test that can take a significant amount of time to plete. Strictly speaking it cannot be infinite and there are sane limits to it's execution time. But, I am actually curious if it is possible to have an infinite timeout. Thanks. And, having Infinity as a timeout value as opposed to 1000000 I think would make me feel better about the code. – alecxe Commented Sep 1, 2015 at 20:08

1 Answer 1

Jasmine internally uses setTimeout to wait for specs to finish for a defined period of time.

According to this Q/A - Why does setTimeout() "break" for large millisecond delay values?:

setTimeout using a 32 bit int to store the delay

...

Timeout values too big to fit into a signed 32-bit integer may cause overflow in FF, Safari, and Chrome, resulting in the timeout being scheduled immediately. It makes more sense simply not to schedule these timeouts, since 24.8 days is beyond a reasonable expectation for the browser to stay open.

As soon as Infinity is greater than any other number the overflow occurs.

The max safe integer in this case is 2³¹-1 = 2147483647. This value is finite, so the test won't actually run infinitely long, but as said I think 24.8 days is long enough.

You can define a constant to store this value:

jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL = 2000;

var MAX_SAFE_TIMEOUT = Math.pow(2, 31) - 1;

describe('suite', function () {

  it('should work infinitely long', function (done) {

    setTimeout(function () {
      expect(true).toBe(true);
      done();
    }, 3000)

  }, MAX_SAFE_TIMEOUT);

});

See working sample here