rails test rspec capybara have_css no matches

Question

I am struggling with a simple test

require "rails_helper"

RSpec.feature "Home page", :type => :feature do
 scenario "When a user visit it" do
  visit "/"
  expect(page).to have_css('article', count: 10) 
 end
end

in the view I have this code

<% @articles.each do |article| %>
  <article>
    <header> <%= article.title%> </header>
    <div class="content-summary"> <%= article.body %> </div>
  </article>
  <hr/>
<% end %>

when I run the test I get

Failure/Error: expect(page).to have_css('article', count: 10)
   expected to find css "article" 10 times but there were no matches

I run the server and I can see that 10 article tags exist.

when I change the view to this

<% 10.times do %>
  <article>
    <header> </header>
    <div class="content-summary"> </div>
  </article>
  <hr/>
<% end %>

the test pass

Please help me

Answer 1

Rails have separate databases for each of the environment. Local server is run in development mode by default and, therefore, is connected to the app_name_development database. RSpec, however, run tests in test environment and uses app_name_test database. That is why articles you see when you run a server are not available in the RSpec test.

Tests require manual data setup. If you are using RSpec then, I assume, you have FactoryGirl installed as well. In this case test should probably look like this:

require "rails_helper"

RSpec.feature "Home page", :type => :feature do
  let!(:articles) { create_list(:article, 10) }

  scenario "When a user visit it" do
    visit "/"
    expect(page).to have_css('article', count: 10) 
  end
end