Capybara not finding javascript

Question

I am new to Capybara testing and am having a few issues.

I have a scenario I am trying to run, and this is the step implementation:

When /^I select the signin link$/ do
  click_link 'Sign in'
end

I have tried to access this link with xpath, css, and tried the within implementation as well. Capybara cannot seem to find it, and returns a Capybara::ElementNotFound exception in all cases.

When I load the webpage without JavaScript, the link is not visible, and I'm wondering if this is why Capybara cannot find it. I found a trigger method, but am unsure how it works. Does anyone have a working example of trigger, or any other ideas for what I should do?

nzifnab · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-08 18:17:39Z

3

Are you using the selenium webdriver to run this test? It sounds like you are trying to run a scenario that requires javascript to see certain elements, without using a driver that supports javascript.

In your .feature file all you have to do is add this line before the scenario:

@javascript
Scenario:  My Scenario
  When blah blah blah
  ...

The @javascript tag tells capybara to use selenium-webdriver to run the test. It'll fire up firefox and go through the test - allowing all javascript functionality to work. This slows tests down considerably so only use it when absolutely necessary to test ajax-y and javascript-y behavior.

If that still doesn't work you can use this step:

Then show me the page
When I select the signin link

Which will open the page up for you in a new browser in that page's current state for your inspecting pleasure.

answered Mar 8, 2011 at 18:17

nzifnab

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3 Comments

Rebecca Over a year ago

Thank you. In my head (for some reason) I assumed Capybara would magically know to open a browser. I have installed firefox, and the selenium-webdriver gem (jruby -S gem install selenium-webdriver) and have altered my env.rb file to include (require 'selenium-webdriver').

nzifnab Over a year ago

I think Capybara requires it itself. When installing cucumber I just used the --capybara command and everything for it "just worked," and I see no selenium-webdriver required but I definitely have tests that use it. Feel free to accept this answer as the correct one if it was satisfactory :)

Gabe Kopley Over a year ago

@Rebecca you can also add this you your features/support/env.rb if all your tests depend on javascript, obviating the need for @javascript tags everywhere: Capybara.default_driver = :selenium

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