How do I get the HTML in an element using Capybara

Question

I’m writing a cucumber test where I want to get the HTML in an element.

For example:

within 'table' do
  # this works
  find('//tr[2]//td[7]').text.should == "these are the comments" 

  # I want something like this (there is no "html" method)
  find('//tr[2]//td[7]').html.should == "these are the <b>comments</b>" 
end

Anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

You can call HTML DOM innerHTML Property:

find('//tr[2]//td[7]')['innerHTML']

Should work for any browser or driver. You can check all available properties on w3schools

Answer 2

try calling find('//tr[2]//td[10]').node on it to get at the actual nokogiri object

Answer 3

If you're using the Poltergeist driver, these methods will allow you to inspect what matches:

http://www.rubydoc.info/gems/poltergeist/1.5.1/Capybara/Poltergeist/Node

For example:

page.find('[name="form-field"]').native.value == 'something'

Answer 4

This post is old, but I think I found a way if you still need this.

To access the Nokogiri node from the Capybara element (using Capybara 1.0.0beta1, Nokogiri 1.4.4) try this:

elem = find('//tr[2]//td[10]')
node = elem.native
#This will give you a Nokogiri XML element

node.children[1].attributes["href"].value.should == "these are the <b>comments</b>"

The last part may vary for you, but you should be able to find the HTML somewhere in that node variable

Answer 5

I ran into the same issue as Cyril Duchon-Doris, and per https://github.com/teampoltergeist/poltergeist/issues/629 the way to access the HTML of an Capybara::Poltergeist::Node is via the outerHTML property, e.g.:

find('//tr[2]//td[7]')['outerHTML']

Answer 6

Another option is to can call #native on the element to return a Nokogiri::XML::Element and then convert that element to a string with #to_html:

find('//tr[2]//td[7]').native.to_html