How to get current path with query string using Capybara

Question

The page url is something like /people?search=name while I used current_path method of capybara it returned /people only.

current_path.should == people_path(:search => 'name')

But it fails saying

expected: "/people?search=name"
got: "/people"

How we can make it pass? Is there is any way to do this?

Answer 1

I've updated this answer to reflect modern conventions in capybara. I think this is ideal since this is the accepted answer, and what many people are being referred to when looking for a solution. With that said, the correct way to check the current path is to use the has_current_path? matcher provided by Capybara, as documented here: Click Here

Example usage:

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_path(search: 'name'))

As you can see in the documentation, other options are available. If the current page is /people?search=name but you only care that it's on the /people page regardless of the param, you can send the only_path option:

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_path, only_path: true)

Additionally, if you want to compare the entire URL:

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_url, url: true)

Credit to Tom Walpole for pointing out this method.

Answer 2

I replaced the _path method with _url to achieve comparing the full urls with parameters.

current_url.should == people_url(:search => 'name')

Answer 3

Just updating this question for modern times. The current best practice for checking current_paths when using Capybara 2.5+ is to use the current_path matcher, which will use Capybaras waiting behavior to check the path. If wanting to check against the request_uri (path and query string)

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_path(:search => 'name'))  

If only wanting the path part (ignoring the query string)

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_path, only_path: true) # Capybara < 2.16
expect(page).to have_current_path(people_path, ignore_query: true) # Capybara >= 2.16

If wanting to match the full url

expect(page).to have_current_path(people_url, url: true) # Capybara < 2.16
expect(page).to have_current_path(people_url) # Capybara >= 2.16

the matcher will take a string which is compared with == or a regex to match against

expect(page).to have_current_path(/search=name/)

Answer 4

I know an answer has been selected, but I just wanted to give an alternative solution. So:

To get the path and querystring, like request.fullpath in Rails, you can do:

URI.parse(current_url).request_uri.should == people_path(:search => 'name')

You can also do a helper method in your test class (like ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest) like this (which is what I did):

def current_fullpath
  URI.parse(current_url).request_uri
end

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

EDIT: as Tinynumberes mentioned, this fails for URLs with port number. Keeping it here in case anyone else has the same brilliant idea.

current_url[current_host.size..-1]

golfs exactly as well (35 chars) as URI.parse(current_url).request_uri, but is potentially faster because there is no explicit URI parsing involved.

I have made a pull request to add this to Capybara at: https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara/pull/1405