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Trying to test that page contains <title>My Title</title> with:

# spec/features/reports_spec.rb
require 'spec_helper'

feature "Archive Management" do
  subject { page }

  describe "Index Page" do
    before(:all) { 10.times { FactoryGirl.create(:randomreport) } }
    after(:all) { Report.delete_all }

    describe "when no search terms present" do
      before { visit reports_path }

      it { should have_selector('title', text: 'My Title') } # <= Fails w/Capybara 2.0
      it { should have_selector('title') }                   # <= passes
      it { should have_text('My Title') }                    # <= passes
      it { should have_selector('h2', text: "Welcome") }     # <= passes
    end
  end
end

Error message: 

 Failure/Error: it { should have_selector('title', text: base_title) }
 Capybara::ExpectationNotMet:
   expected to find css "title" with text "My Title" but there were no matches. Also found "", which matched the selector but not all filters.

I know I'm overlooking the painfully obvious but can't figure out what it is? Are <title> tags no longer considered 'selectors'?!? Or...?!?

Edit (debugger info):

If I drop down into the debugger as cleverly suggested by @shioyama it is clear that the page.body contains <title>My Title</title>. The same page.body that contains <h2>Welcome to My Title Project</h2> and passes!

It appears to find the <title>...</title> tag but not My Title within it. But it does find My Title later in the page within <a href=\"/\" class=\"brand\">My Title</a> and/or in <h2>Welcome to The My Title Project</h2>:

(rdb:1) p page
#<Capybara::Session>
(rdb:1) p page.body
"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<title>My Title</title>\n
<meta content='research, report, technology' name='keywords'>\n<meta 
content='Some Project' name='description'>\n<link href=\"/assets/application.css\"
...
</head>\n<body>\n<header class='navbar navbar-fixed-top 
navbar-inverse'>\n<div class='navbar-inner'>\n<div class='container'>\n
<a href=\"/\" class=\"brand\">My Title</a>\n<div class='pull-right'>\n
<ul class='nav'>\n<li><a href=\"/about\">About</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"/help\">Help</a>
</li>\n</ul>\n<form accept-charset=\"UTF-8\" action=\"/reports\" 
class=\"navbar-search\" method=\"get\"><div style=\"margin:0;padding:0;display:inline\">
<input name=\"utf8\" type=\"hidden\" value=\"&#x2713;\" /></div>\n
<input class=\"search-query\" id=\"query\" name=\"query\" 
placeholder=\"Search\" type=\"text\" />\n</form>\n\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</header>\n\n
<div class='container'>\n<div class='hero-unit center'>\n<h1>My Title</h1>\n
<h2>Welcome to The My Title Project</h2>\n<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur 
adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. 
...

What else could I try in the debugger to figure out why have_selector?('title', text: ...) is failing?

So, what is the proper way to test for a title in Capybara 2.0?

Dave Schweisguth
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Meltemi
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6 Answers6

35

I had the same issues when I upgraded to Capybara 2.0, and managed to solve them by creating the following custom RSpec matcher using Capybara.string:

spec/support/utilities.rb

RSpec::Matchers::define :have_title do |text|
  match do |page|
    Capybara.string(page.body).has_selector?('title', text: text)
  end
end

Now, in a spec file where subject { page }, I can use:

it { should have_title("My Title") }
it { should_not have_title("My Title") }

As an aside, the conversation on this question was extremely helpful in getting me to this answer, so thank you!

Update 1:

If you don't want to create a custom RSpec matcher, thanks to this StackOverflow answer by user dimuch I now know that you can call have_selector directly on page.source (aliased page.body) to test for non-visible DOM elements:

it "should show the correct title" do
  page.source.should have_selector('title', text: 'My Title')
end

or where subject { page }:

its(:source) { should have_selector('title', text: 'My Title') }

Update 2:

From Capybara 2.1, there are built-in have_title/has_title? matchers, negating the need for the custom RSpec matcher in this answer. Furthermore, the its(:source) { ... } tests described in Update 1 seem to break under Capybara 2.1; I've confirmed the have_title/has_title? work as expected, so it's probably best to go with the following syntax if you plan on upgrading:

When subject { page }:

it { should have_title("My Title") }
it { should_not have_title("My Title") }

When using expect syntax within an it/scenario block:

expect(page).to have_title("My Title")
expect(page).to_not have_title("My Title")
Community
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Paul Fioravanti
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  • thanks for your solution ... I am also testing the update action but I am getting a "NoMethodError: undefined method put" ... Any suggestions? ... Thanks. – thomasvermaak Jan 15 '13 at 17:07
  • @railguage48, you might want to consider asking a separate question as there's no way we can tell what your issue is without a lot more details. – Paul Fioravanti Jan 23 '13 at 02:23
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    Per @Paul Fioravanti Update 2, I use the following with Capybara 2.1 (and RSpec 2.12): `expect(response.body).to have_title('my title')` And this works fine for me. – likethesky May 13 '13 at 23:42
  • `page.should have_selector('title', text: 'My Title', visible: false)` will work too. In fact passing `visible: false` works with any selector where you need to match hidden content. So while `has_title` is more elegant for matching title, if you need to match other hidden content, use `visible: false`. Using expect syntax: `expect(response.body).to have_selector('title', text: 'my title', visible: false)` – Benissimo Dec 09 '13 at 12:38
3

Capybara 2.1 changed its support for querying the title element. So using have selector in to query for the title element in the head of the html doc in this fashion will fail "page.should have_selector('title', :text => 'Some text'). From what i understand the preferred method in capybara 2.1 new API is to use "page.should have_title('Some text')" to query the title element should work.

elrick
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3

i ran into the same issue when upgrading capybara from version 1.x to > 2.0

The problem is that Capybara ignores invisible text in its matchers. The cleanest way to address this issue is to use the :visible => false option on finders.

e.g.

it { should have_selector('title', text: 'My Title', visible: false) }

Another (global) option is to set:

Capybara.ignore_hidden_elements = false

dfherr
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2

I had this problem only when using 'shared_examples_for', maybe because of other changes. I also noticed that when I placed 

<title>My Title</title>
in the body of the page (where it doesn't belong and won't render), the test passed. Not a good thing!

This worked: 

it{should have_title("My Title")}

(capybara 2.1.0, launchy 2.3.0, nokogiri 1.5.9, rspec 2.13)

Noddinoff
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1

I see two possible issues here:

  1. The <title> tag is present on the page but the text My Title is somewhere else on the page, not within the tag. That would explain why the other tests pass: there is a <title> tag on the page so have_selector('title') passes, and there is the My Title text on the page so have_text(base_title) passes.
  2. The <title> tag contains the text My Title as well as something else, which would also explain the results you see: there is a <title> tag on the page so have_selector('title') passes, and there is the text My Title so the have_text(base_title) also passes, however the text option in have_selector is strict, therefore it will fail if it finds a string which does not exactly equal My Title.

You can check the latter of these two possibilities using the xpath selector: should have_xpath("//title[contains(.,'#{base_title}')]"). If that passes, then you probably have some whitespace or newlines around your title text which are tripping have_selector up (I thought it ignored those, but I could be wrong).

Hope that helps.

Chris Salzberg
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  • ya but...I can verify that `My Title` exists on the page being tested and have done so with `save_and_open_page` so there *is* text between the tags. – Meltemi Nov 26 '12 at 23:11
  • I can remove `base_title` so that it's not a distraction and replace it with `'My Title'` and it still won't pass. There is no unnecessary white space that I can see (unless for some inexplicable reason there are control characters in there that are causing test to fail). I think this is a semantic/syntax issue relating to changes with Capybara 2.0 but I can't figure it out... – Meltemi Nov 26 '12 at 23:37
  • Oh I realized now that I'm using Capybara 1.1.2 in the project where I use `have_selector` in the way that you have here, so perhaps you're right. – Chris Salzberg Nov 26 '12 at 23:55
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    This is just getting weirder but I find if I replace `subject { page }` with `subject { page.body }` then all specs pass...which is ironic because the `...` tag is w/in the `` tag and not the ``!?! OR, i can replace `should ...` with `body.should ...` and it'll pass. What the hell is going on and why isn't this documented? I'm too big of an RSpec newb to wrap my head around it all... – Meltemi Nov 27 '12 at 00:31
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    The `body` in `page.body` is not the HTML body (i.e. what's in the `` tags), but the body of the *response* (a string), which includes the full HTML. So that's not really weird. `page` itself is an instance of `Capybara::Session`, so really a totally different type of object. – Chris Salzberg Nov 27 '12 at 05:17
  • p.s. I've tested some code using `has_selector?` in the console and I find that the `:text` option is actually checking that the content in the selected tags *contains* the text (does not have to be an exact match). So I can't really explain the behaviour you're observing. – Chris Salzberg Nov 27 '12 at 05:22
  • Sorry, my comment above was regarding capybara 1.1.2, I'm currently trying to update to see if I can isolate the issue. Have a read of this if you haven't already: http://alindeman.github.com/2012/11/11/rspec-rails-and-capybara-2.0-what-you-need-to-know.html – Chris Salzberg Nov 27 '12 at 05:42
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    Update: I've now confirmed that what I observed above in the console applies to Capybara 2.0.1 as well. So I don't know what's going on in your case, but I'd suggest adding `debugger` to your Gemfile, and a line `require 'debugger'; debugger'` inside your test. Then you can experiment, e.g. `p page.has_selector?('title')` etc. (`p` = print). – Chris Salzberg Nov 27 '12 at 05:46
0

I know this has an accepted answer already, but for what it's worth, you can do the following, in less lines of code:

title = first("head title").native.text
expect(title).to == "What you expect it to match"

This allows access to the native driver element; further, since Capybara 2.0 ignores invisible text (title is invisible except to the browser), you would need this (or a similar workaround) to satisfy this case. (See https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara/issues/863)

Steve Tipton
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