Capybara: Unable to find css

I am using capybara to click a checkbox, however it can't seem to find it no matter what I do. I am able to correctly find both the span and the label inside the span, but not the input I actually need.

Here is the checkbox

<span> <input name="agreement" onclick="agreeValidate();" type="checkbox" value="false"> <label for="agreement">I accept the <a href="" target="_blank">Terms of Use</a>, <a href="" target="_blank">Privacy Policy</a>, and am at least 13 years old</label> </span> 

And here are some of the things I have tried

page.check('agreement') find(:css, '#agreement').set(true) find('#agreement').set(true) find('#agreement').click 

However, they all give me the same error

Unable to find css "#agreement" (Capybara::ElementNotFound) 

I am also wondering will any of these methods fire off the onclick method, when the checkbox is clicked? I feel like find(:css, '#agreement').set(true) will not trigger the onclick event. However, I am not sure about the rest.

Update

I have also tried selecting the element through xpath. Here are the various things I have found out

find(:xpath, '//*[@id="registration"]/span[2]') 

This is able to find the span element no problem

find(:xpath, '//*[@id="registration"]/span[2]/input') 

This can't find the element I need, but this xpath correctly selects the element in chrome's console

find(:xpath, '//*[@id="agreement"]') 

This can't find the element I need, but the xpath selects the element in chrome's console

find(:xpath, '//*[@id="registration"]/span[2]/label') 

This is able to find the label element in the span with no problem.

6 Answers

I had the exact issue yesterday. Capybara was automatically ignoring the input due to it being invisible. I solved it with the following:

find('#agreement', :visible => false).click 

You can also add the following to env.rb to enable Capybara to interact with all hidden elements:

Capybara.ignore_hidden_elements = false 

Try to add :visible option set to false.

find('#agreement', visible: false).click 

By default Capybara finds only visible elements. It seems that underlying driver identified this input as invisible so it hasn't been found by Capybara.

:visible option is also supported by most of other Capybara methods (like check, has_css?, have_selector, etc.)

Try this page.execute_script("$('#agreement').attr('checked', true)"). To make this work you should tag your examples with js: true

I have the same problem ... I tried the following it works fine ...

find('#tos', visible: false).set(true) 

The problem is that the page is not being rendered because you're taken to some other page. To solve this, you don't need to change you're Capybara code. You will likely have to make some changes in your controller code.

I got this idea since you brought up in one of the comments that you are taken to your domain's internal server when doing save_and_open_page instead. Please provide me with the details of what you see in the internal server. Are there any error messages you see there? Also, please provide me with your code for the controller action of that view you want to check a checkbox on and any other code you defined that's called in that controller action.

Hard to tell without seeing the whole HTML page. Here are some possible problems:

1. You may be looking for the checkbox before the page is fully loaded? Make sure you have enough wait time before calling find(#agreement)
2. You may have multiple tags with the same. Make sure you only have one.
3. Make sure the page is valid HTML.
4. Make sure the checkbox is visible, and enabled, and agreeValidate() is working properly.