How do I test if a submit button exists in capybara?

Question

I want to have a test in rspec for the existence of a submit button. I am using capybara as well.

I have tried:

should have_tag("input","Submit button")

and

should have_content("Submit, button")

but it either raises an exception or gives false positives.

Answer 1

These are all good suggestions, but if you want to confirm that it's a button and that it has the right value (for display), you have to be a little more detailed:

page.should have_selector("input[type=submit][value='Press Me']")

I don't know of an existing matcher that does this. Here's a custom RSpec2 matcher I wrote:

RSpec::Matchers.define :have_submit_button do |value|
  match do |actual|
    actual.should have_selector("input[type=submit][value='#{value}']")
  end
end

Here's the RSpec3 version (courtesy @zwippie):

RSpec::Matchers.define :have_submit_button do |value|
  match do |actual|
    expect(actual).to have_selector("input[type=submit][value='#{value}']")
  end
end

I keep it in spec/support/matchers/request_matchers.rb with my other custom matchers. RSpec picks it up automatically. Since this is an RSpec matcher (rather than a Capybara finder), it will work in both feature specs (Capybara) and view specs (RSpec without Capybara).

Feature spec usage:

page.should have_submit_button("Save Me")

View spec usage (after calling render):

rendered.should have_submit_button("Save Me")

Note that if you're in a Capybara request spec, and you would like to interact with a submit button, that's a lot easier:

click_button "Save Me"

There's no guarantee that it's actually a submit button, but your feature specs should just be testing the behavior and not worrying about that level of detail.

Answer 2

There is a built-in matcher has_button?.

Using RSpec you can have an assertion like

page.should have_button('Submit button')

Or with new RSpec 3 syntax:

expect(page).to have_button('Submit button')