How to find an element by matching exact text of the element in Capybara

Question

I have following two elements in HTML

<a href="/berlin" >Berlin</a>
<a href="/berlin" >Berlin Germany </a>

I am trying to find the element by using following Capybara method

find("a", :text => "berlin")

Above will return two elements because both contains text berlin.

Is there a way to match exact text in Capybara ?

Capybara or nokogiri? Why is this tagged both? – pguardiario Dec 14 '12 at 13:16 — pguardiario, Dec 14 '12 at 13:16

pje · Answer 1 · 2014-02-11T16:30:16.653

148

Use a regexp instead of a string for the value of the :text key:

find("a", :text => /\ABerlin\z/)

Check out the 'Options Hash' section of the Method: Capybara::Node::Finders#all documentation.

PS: text matches are case sensitive. Your example code actually raises an error:

find("a", :text => "berlin")
# => Capybara::ElementNotFound:
#    Unable to find css "a" with text "berlin"

edited Feb 11 '14 at 16:30

answered Dec 14 '12 at 19:01

pje

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It's terrible that this is the best answer. :cry: – BM5k May 16 '14 at 20:15
why do we have \A and \z between Berlin? – Karan Verma Nov 18 '14 at 23:39
1

how can I add a placeholder in the regex – FluffyBeing Nov 16 '16 at 16:01
This could have been handled by writing `click_link(link_text, :text => link_text)` – Sunil Kumar Dec 13 '18 at 05:50
1

[This better-seeming answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/60492251/199712) worked for me. – Jason Swett May 28 '21 at 13:00

score 63 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 22 '16 at 16:40

63

Depending on which version of the gem you are using

find('a', text: 'Berlin', exact: true)

may be deprecated. In which case you would have to use

find('a', text: 'Berlin', match: :prefer_exact)

edited Dec 22 '16 at 16:40

Alex V

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answered Apr 23 '15 at 19:06

Gabriel Pumple

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score 24 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 02 '20 at 15:43

24

You can do so too:

find('a', text: 'Berlin', exact_text: true)

That will find for CSS.

And using only exact: true instead of exact_text will show you a msg that exact option is only valid for XPATH.

answered Mar 02 '20 at 15:43

CamiloVA

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or even more, you can use `find("a", exact_text: "berlin")` – Kukunin May 06 '20 at 16:26
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This also works for other matchers like `have_button('Copy', exact: true)`. – Jason L. Jun 23 '22 at 16:24

score 8 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 17 '16 at 07:59

8

Just use Capybara's exact option:

Capybara.exact = true

edited Oct 17 '16 at 07:59

ndnenkov

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answered Jan 31 '14 at 18:03

John W

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score 6 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 13 '19 at 15:31

6

My preference is to use the have_selector with text and exact_text: true:

expect(body).to have_selector 'a', text: 'Berlin', exact_text: true

answered Jun 13 '19 at 15:31

Paweł Gościcki

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score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 13 '18 at 05:48

For using click_link in capybara you need to add one more property in the method using it.

click_link(link_name, :text => link_name)

Here the link_name is the text value of a link. Using :text keyword we are specifying that we want to click on a link having the text value which is exact matching to our requirement.

How to find an element by matching exact text of the element in Capybara

6 Answers6