Capybara cheatsheet

March 24, 2021

Are you working with capybara?… Are you constantly searching for capybara helpers?

Here is a small reference with some of the most used methods/helpers.

# Navigate to a particular path
visit blogs_path
visit "/blog"

# Click on an anchor tag, button, or input with type submit
click_on "Save Project"
click_on "New Project"

# Click an anchor tag
click_link 'New Project'

# Click a button, or input with type submit
click_button 'Save'

# Find and click a Capybara::Element
find("a.title").click

Form interaction

# Fill input fields (text, textarea, number, phone, etc...)
fill_in 'Title', with: 'I love Rails!'
fill_in 'post[title]', with: 'I love Rails!'

# Checkbox
check 'I accept the terms and conditions'
uncheck 'I accept the terms and conditions'

# Radio button
choose 'Female'

# Select option from select tag
select 'MA', from: 'State'

# File input
attach_file Rails.root.join('spec/fixture/some_file.png')

# Click a button, or input with type submit
click_button 'Save'

# Accept a confirm dialog
accept_confirm do
  click_on 'Destroy'
end

Page interaction and scoping

# Returns a single Capybara::Node::Element instance from the page.
# It will wait for an element to appear on the page.
# If the element does not appear it will raise an error.
page.find('.todos li:first-child')

# Returns an array of Capybara::Node::Element instances from the page.
page.all('.todos li:nth-of-type(odd)')

# Within will scope interaction to within a particular selector.
within('footer') do
  expect(page).to have_content('Copyright')
end

# Is the selector present on the page?
page.has_css?('nav[data-role="user-menu"] li', text: 'Profile')

# Is the content present on the page?
page.has_content?('Sign in')

Matchers

# Is the content present on the page?
expect(page).to have_content("Some Content")
expect(page).to have_no_content("Some Content")

# Is the selector present on the page?
expect(page).to have_css("input#post_title")
expect(page).to have_css("input#post_title", value: "Capybara cheatsheet")

# Is the selector present X times on the page?
expect(page).to have_css("input", count: 3)
expect(page).to have_css("input", maximum: 3)
expect(page).to have_css("input", minimum: 3)
expect(page).to have_css("input", between: 1..3)

# Is the selector with the right text on the page?
expect(page).to have_css("p a", text: "hello")
expect(page).to have_css("p a", text: /[hH]ello(.+)/i)

# Is the field present?
expect(page).to have_field("FirstName")
expect(page).to have_field("FirstName", value: "Rambo")
expect(page).to have_field("FirstName", with: "Rambo")
expect(page).to have_field("FirstName", disabled: true)

# Is the link present?
expect(page).to have_link("Foo")
expect(page).to have_link("Foo", href: "example.com")
expect(page).to have_no_link("Foo", href: "example.com")

Node interaction

# Trigger a click on a Capybara::Element
find("a.title").click

# Trigger allow triggering a custom event.
find("a.title").trigger("focus")

# Is the element visible?
find(".navigation").visible?

Debugging

# Save the current page and attempt to open the HTML
# in the default web browser.
save_and_open_page

References

This cheatsheet is just a mix of other very usefull cheatsheets and other references.

Get the cheatsheet on PDF

If you work with capybara and you are constantly searching for capybara helpers, maybe to have this little cheatsheet at hand could work for you.