How to select date from a select box using Capybara in Rails 3?

Question

I\'m writing a spec for a controller in Rails 3 project using RSpec and Capybara, and I want to select current date from a select box. I tried:

select Date.t         


        

Answer 1

Given the following Formtastic code renders Rails default date selector:

= f.input :born_on, end_year: Time.now.year, start_year: 60.years.ago.year

In your spec, break the date into separate calls to each individual select tag:

select '1956', from: 'person_born_on_1i'
select 'July', from: 'person_born_on_2i'
select '9', from: 'person_born_on_3i'

I don't like that this code is so aware of the HTML, but it does work with the versions of gems at this time.

Gems:

• Capybara 2.1.0
• Formtastic 2.2.1
• Rails 3.2.13
• RSpec 2.13.0

Answer 2

It looks like this one has been sufficiently covered, but see Capybara's docs for an official answer. You can select by name, id, or label text.

Answer 3

A slight adaption of Markus's answer:

def select_date(date, options = {})  
  raise ArgumentError, 'from is a required option' if options[:from].blank?
  field = options[:from].to_s
  select date.year.to_s,               :from => "#{field}_1i"
  select Date::MONTHNAMES[date.month], :from => "#{field}_2i"
  select date.day.to_s,                :from => "#{field}_3i"
end

Answer 4

In my particular situation, I'm adding potentially multiple date select fields to the page with accepts_nested_attributes_for functionality. This means, I'm not sure what the full id or name of the fields are going to be.

Here's the solution I came up with in case it helps anyone else Googling this:

I'm wrapping the date select field in a container div with a class:

<div class='date-of-birth-container'>
  <%= f.date_select :date_of_birth %>
</div>

Then in my feature spec:

within '.date-of-birth-container' do
  find("option[value='1']", text: 'January').select_option
  find("option[value='1']", text: '1').select_option
  find("option[value='1955']").select_option
end

Here's a helper method I wrote for it:

def select_date_within_css_selector(date, css_selector)
  month_name = Date::MONTHNAMES.fetch(date.month)
  within css_selector do
    find("option[value='#{date.month}']", text: month_name).select_option
    find("option[value='#{date.day}']", text: date.day.to_s).select_option
    find("option[value='#{date.year}']").select_option
  end
end

Then using the helper:

select_date_within_css_selector(Date.new(1955, 1, 1), '.date-of-birth-container')

Answer 5

Thanks to Dylan for pointing it out, but in case anyone is looking for the cucumber version, you can use this:

select_date("Date of birth", :with => "1/1/2011")

For more information, see select_date.

Answer 6

For Rails 4, in case somebody gets to this question without being limited to Rails 3.

  select '2020',  from: 'field_name_{}_1i'
  select 'January',  from: 'field_name_{}_2i'
  select '1', from: 'field_name_{}_3i'

You can of course extract this to a helper and make it dynamic.