Appium waitForElementByName always returns state: pending

Question

So I'm using Appium to test an iOS app. I've written my tests in javascript and am using Mocha as the testing framework. Everything runs fine except for trying to get an example test to pass:

it('should find sign up label', function () {
  return driver.waitForElementByName('_signUpLabel', 3000)
    .then(function (el) {
      el.text().should.equal('Sign up with...');
    });
});

And this is the app's code in question:

_signUpLabel = [[UILabel alloc] init];
[_signUpLabel setAccessibilityIdentifier:@"_signUpLabel"];
...
[_signUpLabel setText:@"Sign up with..."];
[view addSubview:_signUpLabel];

The iOS simulator loads, then the app loads, then the login view loads just fine with the element in view, yet the error I receive is: AssertionError: expected { state: 'pending' } to equal 'Sign up with...'

I can see that Appium has found an element through its logging:

 > CALL waitForElementByName("_signUpLabel",3000)
 > CALL elements("name","_signUpLabel")
 > POST /session/:sessionID/elements {"using":"name","value":"_signUpLabel"}
 > RESPONSE elements("name","_signUpLabel") [{"ELEMENT":"0"}]
 > RESPONSE waitForElementByName("_signUpLabel",3000) {"ELEMENT":"0"}
 > CALL element.text()
 > GET /session/:sessionID/element/0/text

So can someone tell me where I'm being stupid?

Answer 1

Is el.text() sync or async? The pending suggests you might need to wait for a result?