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

The following worked for me, using a date_field:

fill_in "Date", with: DateTime.now.strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

Answer 2

You need to specify the exact value as it's in the select menu in html. So if your select has values like "2011/01/01" then you need to write:

select '2011/01/01', :from => 'Date of birth'

Your code fails because you pass a date object.

Answer 3

Had the same problem. I googled at lot and solved it this way:

1. Wrote date select macros into /spec/request_macros.rb The select_by_id method is necessary for me, because the month is dependent on the translation

   module RequestMacros
     def select_by_id(id, options = {})
       field = options[:from]
       option_xpath = "//*[@id='#{field}']/option[#{id}]"
       option_text = find(:xpath, option_xpath).text
       select option_text, :from => field
     end
   
     def select_date(date, options = {})
       field = options[:from]
       select date.year.to_s,   :from => "#{field}_1i"
       select_by_id date.month, :from => "#{field}_2i"
       select date.day.to_s,    :from => "#{field}_3i"  
     end
   end
   

2. Added them to my /spec/spec_helper.rb

   config.include RequestMacros, :type => :request
   

Now in my integration tests in spec/requests i can use

select_date attr[:birthday], :from => "user_birthday"

Thanks to http://jasonneylon.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/selecting-from-a-dropdown-generically-with-capybara/ and https://gist.github.com/558786 :)

Answer 4

I found a clean solution for rspec and capybara to test using date and time select methods, where in your HTML you use a datetime select or date select. This works with Rails 4, RSpec 3.1 and Capybara 2.4.4.

Say in your HTML form you have the following:

<%= f.datetime_select(:start_date, {default: DateTime.now, prompt: {day: 'Choose day', month: "Choose month", year: "Choose year"}}, {class: "date-select"}) %>

the DateTime Select View helper will create 5 select fields with ids such as id="modelname_start_date_1i", where the id the is appended with 1i, 2i, 3i, 4i, 5i. By default Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute. If you change the order of the fields, make sure to change the feature helper below.

1) Create a Feature Helper for dates and times helpers

spec/support/helpers/date_time_select_helpers.rb

module Features
  module DateTimeSelectHelpers

    def select_date_and_time(date, options = {})
      field = options[:from]
      select date.strftime('%Y'),  :from => "#{field}_1i" #year
      select date.strftime('%B'),  :from => "#{field}_2i" #month
      select date.strftime('%-d'), :from => "#{field}_3i" #day 
      select date.strftime('%H'),  :from => "#{field}_4i" #hour
      select date.strftime('%M'),  :from => "#{field}_5i" #minute
    end

    def select_date(date, options = {})
      field = options[:from]
      select date.strftime('%Y'),  :from => "#{field}_1i" #year
      select date.strftime('%B'),  :from => "#{field}_2i" #month
      select date.strftime('%-d'), :from => "#{field}_3i" #day 
    end
  end
end 

Note that for the day I use %-d that gives you a non-padded numeric value (i.e. 4) instead of %d that has a zero-padded numeric value (i.e. 04). Check the date formats with strftime

2) You then need to include your date and time helpers methods in spec/support/helpers.rb so you can use them in any spec file.

require 'support/helpers/date_time_select_helpers'
RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Features::DateTimeSelectHelpers, type: :feature
end

3) In your Spec file you can call your helper. For example:

feature 'New Post' do
  scenario 'Add a post' do
    visit new_post_path
    fill_in "post[name]", with: "My post"
    select_date_and_time(2.days.from_now, from:"post_start_date")
    click_button "Submit"
    expect(page).to have_content "Your post was successfully saved"
  end
end

Answer 5

with credit to Markus Hartmair for an excellent solution, I prefer to use labels as selectors because of improved readability. So my version of his helper module is:

module SelectDateHelper
  def select_date(date, options = {})
    field = options[:from]
    base_id = find(:xpath, ".//label[contains(.,'#{field}')]")[:for]
    year, month, day = date.split(',')
    select year,  :from => "#{base_id}_1i"
    select month, :from => "#{base_id}_2i"
    select day,   :from => "#{base_id}_3i"
  end
end

call it like this:

select_date "2012,Jan,1", :from => "From date"