testing-library / testing-library/dom-testing-library

Add option to *ByText to search by innerText

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#1,216 2 comments 2 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
JavaScript
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Description

Describe the feature you'd like:

I'd like to have an includeDescendents option to *ByText which would effectively be the same as searching by innerText (but it's not that simple since it needs to respect the ignore option).

I'm new to testing-library and have more familiarity with Cypress. I was hoping to find similar behaviour to cy.contains.

Suggested implementation:
Describe alternatives you've considered:

cy.contains but this is always an { exact: false} match which is usually less than ideal.

Teachability, Documentation, Adoption, Migration Strategy:

Given this:

      <p>
        Refer to the
        <a
          href="https://testing-library.com/docs/dom-testing-library/api-custom-queries"
          >Custom Queries</a
        >
        section for more details.
      </p>

Then this:

findByText('Refer to the Custom Queries section for more details.', { includeDescendents: true })

Should match the p node.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the *ByText query entry points and review how text matching currently handles the ignore option and descendant content. Use the provided findByText example as the acceptance case: the p node should match when includeDescendents is enabled, while exact matching and ignore behavior remain defined.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
javascript
Domain
testing-qa
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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