Capybara::ElementNotFound Exception when the element is constructed dynamically

Question

In cases when we have a dynamic content population in a span tag, for e.g.,

  .detail
    %label Sku:
    %span.#sku.detail= @deal.sku

When the deal in the above example doesn't have sku associated, the span element in the html will be as below without any content in it.

 <div class="detail">
<label>Sku:</label>
<span id="sku" class="detail"></span>
 </div>

If the SitePrism element is defined to look for this for e.g.,

element :sku, "#sku"

and if "@sample_page" is reference to my Site Prism page, and I refer sku as

@sample_page.sku.text

we will get Capybara::ElementNotFound Exception

Answer 1

To avoid this we can check as below

@sample_page.has_sku?

and if the element is available then proceed with the actions as required.

This will omit Capybara::ElementNotFound Exception

Answer 2

When the span has no content it is not visible and thus not found. If you still want to find it, change your element to something like:

element :sku, "#sku", visible: false