arbitrary 404 errors

[natanavra]

TL;DR if you chai-request is inconsistent and sometimes responds with 404 add --retries 1 to your mocha.opts it seems there a race-condition of some sort where the http server is listening but not yet accepting connections.

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chai.request(app) randomly responds with 404 even after successful previous tests.
DEBUG output:

nock.common options.host: 127.0.0.1 +9ms
nock.common options.hostname in the end: "127.0.0.1" +0ms
nock.common options.host in the end: "127.0.0.1:64399" +0ms
nock.intercept interceptors for "127.0.0.1:64399" +9ms
nock.intercept filtering interceptors for basepath http://127.0.0.1:64399 +0ms
nock.common options.host: 127.0.0.1:64399 +0ms
nock.common options.hostname in the end: "127.0.0.1" +0ms
nock.common options.host in the end: "127.0.0.1:64399" +0ms
nock.intercept Net connect  enabled for 127.0.0.1:64399 +0ms
superagent post http://127.0.0.1:64399/pub/sites/wf/state +3ms
superagent post http://127.0.0.1:64399/pub/sites/wf/state -> 404 +1ms

When this doesn't happen - there are usually express DEBUG logs between the two superagent logs, e.g.

superagent options http://127.0.0.1:64357/abcda -> 200 +4ms
...express:router <anonymous>  : /abcda +0ms
superagent options http://127.0.0.1:64357/abcda +130ms

A couple of ideas come to mind:

• Possibly due to a bug in an old superagent dependancy
• nock is causing a quirk in the HTTP req/res cycle

---

EDIT:
I thought this might be related to server.listen since NodeJS documentation states it's asynchronous, so I've added event listeners.

• listening
• connection
• request

listen always happens before superagent DEBUG logs, but when the 404 happens none of the other events are being called, a connection is not being opened.

I've also updated superagent to the latest version ^5.0.0 but still no luck.

I thought about further changing the chai-http/request to be fully async and wait for httpServer.listen callback, but that breaks the superagent method chaining

Right now my workaround is adding --retries 1 to mocha.opts