Capybara

Capybara helps you test web applications by simulating how a real user would interact with your app. It is agnostic about the driver running your tests and comes with Rack::Test and Selenium support built in. WebKit is supported through an external gem.

Support Capybara

If you and/or your company find value in Capybara and would like to contribute financially to its ongoing maintenance and development, please visit Patreon

Need help? Ask on the discussions (please do not open an issue): https://github.com/orgs/teamcapybara/discussions/categories/q-a

Table of contents

• Key benefits
• Setup
• Using Capybara with Cucumber
• Using Capybara with RSpec
• Using Capybara with Test::Unit
• Using Capybara with Minitest
• Using Capybara with Minitest::Spec
• Drivers
  • Selecting the Driver
  • RackTest
  • Selenium
• The DSL
  • Navigating
  • Clicking links and buttons
  • Interacting with forms
  • Querying
  • Finding
  • Scoping
  • Working with windows
  • Scripting
  • Modals
  • Debugging
• Selectors
  • Name
  • Locator
  • Filters
• Matching
  • Exactness
  • Strategy
• Transactions and database setup
• Asynchronous JavaScript (Ajax and friends)
• Using the DSL elsewhere
• Calling remote servers
• Using sessions
  • Named sessions
  • Using sessions manually
• XPath, CSS and selectors
• Beware the XPath // trap
• Configuring and adding drivers
• Gotchas:
• "Threadsafe" mode
• Development

Key benefits

• No setup necessary for Rails and Rack application. Works out of the box.
• Intuitive API which mimics the language an actual user would use.
• Switch the backend your tests run against from fast headless mode to an actual browser with no changes to your tests.
• Powerful synchronization features mean you never have to manually wait for asynchronous processes to complete.

Setup

Capybara requires Ruby 3.0.0 or later. To install, add this line to your Gemfile and run bundle install:

gem 'capybara'

If the application that you are testing is a Rails app, add this line to your test helper file:

require 'capybara/rails'

If the application that you are testing is a Rack app, but not Rails, set Capybara.app to your Rack app:

Capybara.app = MyRackApp

If you need to test JavaScript, or if your app interacts with (or is located at) a remote URL, you'll need to use a different driver. If using Rails 5.0+, but not using the Rails system tests from 5.1, you'll probably also want to swap the "server" used to launch your app to Puma in order to match Rails defaults.

Capybara.server = :puma # Until your setup is working
Capybara.server = :puma, { Silent: true } # To clean up your test output

Using Capybara with Cucumber

The cucumber-rails gem comes with Capybara support built-in. If you are not using Rails, manually load the capybara/cucumber module:

require 'capybara/cucumber'
Capybara.app = MyRackApp

You can use the Capybara DSL in your steps, like so:

When /I sign in/ do
  within("#session") do
    fill_in 'Email', with: 'user@example.com'
    fill_in 'Password', with: 'password'
  end
  click_button 'Sign in'
end

You can switch to the Capybara.javascript_driver (:selenium by default) by tagging scenarios (or features) with @javascript:

@javascript
Scenario: do something Ajaxy
  When I click the Ajax link
  ...

There are also explicit tags for each registered driver set up for you (@selenium, @rack_test, etc).

Using Capybara with RSpec

Load RSpec 3.5+ support by adding the following line (typically to your spec_helper.rb file):

require 'capybara/rspec'

If you are using Rails, put your Capybara specs in spec/features or spec/system (only works if you have it configured in RSpec) and if you have your Capybara specs in a different directory, then tag the example groups with type: :feature or type: :system depending on which type of test you're writing.

If you are using Rails system specs please see their documentation for selecting the driver you wish to use.

If you are not using Rails, tag all the example groups in which you want to use Capybara with type: :feature.

You can now write your specs like so:

describe "the signin process", type: :feature do
  before :each do
    User.create(email: 'user@example.com', password: 'password')
  end

  it "signs me in" do
    visit '/sessions/new'
    within("#session") do
      fill_in 'Email', with: 'user@example.com'
      fill_in 'Password', with: 'password'
    end
    click_button 'Sign in'
    expect(page).to have_content 'Success'
  end
end

Use js: true to switch to the Capybara.javascript_driver (:selenium by default), or provide a :driver option to switch to one specific driver. For example:

describe 'some stuff which requires js', js: true do
  it 'will use the default js driver'
  it 'will switch to one specific driver', driver: :selenium
end

Capybara also comes with a built in DSL for creating descriptive acceptance tests:

feature "Signing in" do
  background do
    User.create(email: 'user@example.com', password: 'caplin')
  end

  scenario "Signing in with correct credentials" do
    visit '/sessions/new'
    within("#session") do
      fill_in 'Email', with: 'user@example.com'
      fill_in 'Password', with: 'caplin'
    end
    click_button 'Sign in'
    expect(page).to have_content 'Success'
  end

  given(:other_user) { User.create(email: 'other@example.com', password: 'rous') }

  scenario "Signing in as another user" do
    visit '/sessions/new'
    within("#session") do
      fill_in 'Email', with: other_user.email
      fill_in 'Password', with: other_user.password
    end
    click_button 'Sign in'
    expect(page).to have_content 'Invalid email or password'
  end
end

feature is in fact just an alias for describe ..., type: :feature, background is an alias for before, scenario for it, and given/given! aliases for let/let!, respectively.

Finally, Capybara matchers are also supported in view specs:

RSpec.describe "todos/show.html.erb", type: :view do
  it "displays the todo title" do
    assign :todo, Todo.new(title: "Buy milk")

    render

    expect(rendered).to have_css("header h1", text: "Buy milk")
  end
end

Note: When you require 'capybara/rspec' proxy methods are installed to work around name collisions between Capybara::DSL methods all/within and the identically named built-in RSpec matchers. If you opt not to require 'capybara/rspec' you can install the proxy methods by requiring 'capybara/rspec/matcher_proxies' after requiring RSpec and 'capybara/dsl'

Using Capybara with Test::Unit

• If you are using Test::Unit, define a base class for your Capybara tests like so:

  require 'capybara/dsl'
  
  class CapybaraTestCase < Test::Unit::TestCase
    include Capybara::DSL
  
    def teardown
      Capybara.reset_sessions!
      Capybara.use_default_driver
    end
  end
  

Using Capybara with Minitest

• If you are using Rails system tests please see their documentation for information on selecting the driver you wish to use.

• If you are using Rails, but not using Rails system tests, add the following code in your test_helper.rb file to make Capybara available in all test cases deriving from ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest:

  require 'capybara/rails'
  require 'capybara/minitest'
  
  class ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest
    # Make the Capybara DSL available in all integration tests
    include Capybara::DSL
    # Make `assert_*` methods behave like Minitest assertions
    include Capybara::Minitest::Assertions
  
    # Reset sessions and driver between tests
    teardown do
      Capybara.reset_sessions!
      Capybara.use_default_driver
    end
  end
  

• If you are not using Rails, define a base class for your Capybara tests like so:

  require 'capybara/minitest'
  
  class CapybaraTestCase < Minitest::Test
    include Capybara::DSL
    include Capybara::Minitest::Assertions
  
    def teardown
      Capybara.reset_sessions!
      Capybara.use_default_driver
    end
  end
  

  Remember to call super in any subclasses that override teardown.

To switch the driver, set Capybara.current_driver. For instance,

class BlogTest < ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest
  setup do
    Capybara.current_driver = Capybara.javascript_driver # :selenium by default
  end

  test 'shows blog posts' do
    # ... this test is run with Selenium ...
  end
end

Using Capybara with Minitest::Spec

Follow the above instructions for Minitest and additionally require capybara/minitest/spec

page.must_have_content('Important!')

Drivers

Capybara uses the same DSL to drive a variety of browser and headless drivers.

Selecting the Driver

By default, Capybara uses the :rack_test driver, which is fast but limited: it does not support JavaScript, nor is it able to access HTTP resources outside of your Rack application, such as remote APIs and OAuth services. To get around these limitations, you can set up a different default driver for your features. For example, if you'd prefer to run everything in Selenium, you could do:

Capybara.default_driver = :selenium # :selenium_chrome and :selenium_chrome_headless are also registered

However, if you are using RSpec or Cucumber (and your app runs correctly without JS), you may instead want to consider leaving the faster :rack_test as the default_driver, and marking only those tests that require a JavaScript-capable driver using js: true or @javascript, respectively. By default, JavaScript tests are run using the :selenium driver. You can change this by setting Capybara.javascript_driver.

You can also change the driver temporarily (typically in the Before/setup and After/teardown blocks):

Capybara.current_driver = :selenium # temporarily select different driver
# tests here
Capybara.use_default_driver       # switch back to default driver

Note: switching the driver creates a new session, so you may not be able to switch in the middle of a test.

RackTest

RackTest is Capybara's default driver. It is written in pure Ruby and does not have any support for executing JavaScript. Since the RackTest driver interacts directly with Rack interfaces, it does not require a server to be started. However, this means that if your application is not a Rack application (Rails, Sinatra and most other Ruby frameworks are Rack applications) then you cannot use this driver. Furthermore, you cannot use the RackTest driver to test a remote application, or to access remote URLs (e.g., redirects to external sites, external APIs, or OAuth services) that your application might interact with.

capybara-mechanize provides a similar driver that can access remote servers.

RackTest can be configured with a set of headers like this:

Capybara.register_driver :rack_test do |app|
  Capybara::RackTest::Driver.new(app, headers: { 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' => 'Capybara' })
end

See the section on adding and configuring drivers.

Selenium

Capybara supports Selenium 3.5+ (Webdriver). In order to use Selenium, you'll need to install the selenium-webdriver gem, and add it to your Gemfile if you're using bundler.

Capybara pre-registers a number of named drivers that use Selenium - they are:

• :selenium => Selenium driving Firefox
• :selenium_headless => Selenium driving Firefox in a headless configuration
• :selenium_chrome => Selenium driving Chrome
• :selenium_chrome_headless => Selenium driving Chrome in a headless configuration

These should work (with relevant software installation) in a local desktop configuration but you may need to customize them if using in a CI environment where additional options may need to be passed to the browsers. See the section on adding and configuring drivers.

Note: drivers which run the server in a different thread may not share the same transaction as your tests, causing data not to be shared between your test and test server, see Transactions and database setup below.

The DSL

A complete reference is available at rubydoc.info.

Note: By default Capybara will only locate visible elements. This is because a real user would not be able to interact with non-visible elements.

Note: All searches in Capybara are case sensitive. This is because Capybara heavily uses XPath, which doesn't support case insensitivity.

Navigating

You can use the visit method to navigate to other pages:

visit('/projects')
visit(post_comments_path(post))

The visit method only takes a single parameter, the request method is always GET.

You can get the current path of the browsing session, and test it using the