Our selectors are pretty ridiculous, mostly because we’re using CSS-in-JS and css modules for our react application. But even if we weren’t, using class names as selectors for our application testing is pretty brittle and not really testing in the way a user would. So instead let’s use cypress-testing-library to improve our selectors and make it easier to read our tests.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Install, Configure, and Script Cypress for JavaScript Web Applications

Installing Cypress Testing Library

Instructor: 00:01 I don't know about you, but working with this selectors would be really difficult in the long term. It's even difficult in the short term. I want to get rid of these selectors and improve this drastically.

00:10 What we're going to do is we'll `npm install` as a devDependency `@testing-library/cypress`.

#### terminal
```bash
npm install --save-dev @testing-library/cypress
```

Install the Cypress member of the testing library family. With that installed, we need to add the custom commands that Cypress testing library exposes. We're going to go to our `support/index.js`.

00:28 At the top here, we'll `import '@testing-library/cypress/add-commands'`. What that's going to do is go through each one of the commands that are exposed by Cypress testing library and adds those to Cypress.

#### index.js
```js
import '@testing-library/cypress/add-commands'
import './commands'
```

00:43 With those all added, we can now use those in our Cypress test. If you're used to testing library modules, then this will be really familiar to you, except you don't have access to the `getByText` typed queries. All those queries that start with "get" because those are synchronous queries and they don't really make sense in Cypress.

01:00 In Cypress, what we use instead is the `findByText` variation which is asynchronous. For this, we're going to provide a regex that matches the button one and then we'll click on "one." We going to do that for each one of these. For each one of these, I'm going to do those same find by text here and for that last one, we'll have to do something special.

#### calculator.js
```js
describe('anonymous calculator', () => {
  it('can make calculations', () => {
    cy.visit('/')
      .findByText(/^1$/)
      .click()

      ...

  })
})
```

01:19 This second one is going to be a plus for. That third one will be the two and then the fourth will be the equals. Let's save that.

```js
describe('anonymous calculator', () => {
  it('can make calculations', () => {
    cy.visit('/')
      .findByText(/^1$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^\+$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^2$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^=$/)
      .click()
      .get('.mN1M6vIr72uG0YPP56ow5')
      .should('have.text', '3')
  })
})
```

Come over to our test and we'll run all the specs. Everything is working just as well as it was before, except our test are way easier to read and understand what the intent is.

![working as before](https://res.cloudinary.com/dg3gyk0gu/image/upload/v1574727282/transcript-images/cypress-installing-cypress-testing-library-working-as-before.png)

01:36 Find by test one, it finds that, it clicks on it. It finds the plus, it clicks on it. It finds the two and it clicks on that. It finds the equals and clicks on that. Then it finds the display value and verifies it has a text to three.

01:50 The display value is a little bit more tricky because if we do simply find by text three, then we'll find both of these. We want to ascertain the display value specifically, but there's nothing in our app that specifically calls this out. This is a situation for a data test ID.

02:05 I'm going to go to my `auto-scaling-text.js` where that is rendered and we're going to add a data test ID for total.

#### auto-scaling-text.js
```js
function AutoScalingText({children}) {
  const nodeRef = React.useRef()
  const scale = getScale(nodeRef.current)
  return (
    <div
      className={styles.autoScalingText}
      style={{transform: `scale(${scale},${scale})`}}
      ref={nodeRef}
      data-testid="total"
    >
      {children}
    </div>
  )
}
```

Then in `calculator.js`, instead of "get" we'll do `.findByTestId('total')`.

#### calculator.js
```js
describe('anonymous calculator', () => {
  it('can make calculations', () => {
    cy.visit('/')
      .findByText(/^1$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^\+$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^2$/)
      .click()
      .findByText(/^=$/)
      .click()
      .findByTestId('total')
      .should('have.text', '3')
  })
})
```

Save that. Our test runs pretty fast but that's what it did. Find by test ID total and it ascertain that that note has the text three.

02:27 In review, what we did was we installed Cypress testing library and configured that in our index JS to automatically add all of the commands that are exposed by Cypress testing library. Then we used those commands in our calculator to make our test resemble the way that our software is used way better by using Cypress Testing Library queries.

02:45 In situations where those queries don't quite work out, we use this find by test ID. We updated our auto scanning texts to include that data test ID so we could select that specific DOM node. That's not something that you want to do very often, but it can come in handy in situations like this.


 is an incredibly powerful web testing tool. It’s capable of testing any web application. Its architecture places it a cut above similar end-to-end testing tools. Its developer experience is best-in-class. And because Cypress runs your tests in the same context as the rest of your application, you’re able to get speed, reliability, and debuggability that are just a long - distant dream with similar tools. The catch? There is no catch. Cypress is exceptional.

In this course, we’ll go over how you can install, configure, and script Cypress to test modern, real - world JavaScript web applications.

What's changed in Install, Configure, and Script Cypress for JavaScript Web Applications

Intro to Install, Configure, and Script Cypress for JavaScript Web Applications 

Despite the fact that Cypress is an application that runs natively on your machine, you can install it and add it as a dependency just like all other dependencies in your package.json file. So let's install Cypress and get our project ready to start end-to-end testing with Cypress.

Install and Run Cypress

Cypress starts out your project with a ton of tests, let’s remove those and add our first test that verifies our calculator can add two numbers together using the Cypress selector playground and Cypress commands.

Write the First Cypress Test

Cypress is fairly simple to configure, but it’s important to optimize our experience in testing Cypress. We’ll configure the baseUrl to make it easier to visit our app and we’ll also move our test files to a folder called e2e to make it more clear what types of tests we want to write with Cypress. We’ll use the cypress.json file, but Cypress can also be configured via command line flags and environment variables.

Configure Cypress in cypress.json

We want to make starting cypress as simple as possible for local development and we need to be able to run a single script that exits when the tests are complete for continuous integration. So let’s add a few scripts to get ourselves setup for this development experience.

Script Cypress for Local Development and Continuous Integration

One of the greatest features of Cypress is how awesome the experience of debugging tests is. You do have to get used to the asynchronous nature of E2E testing, but once you get the hang of that debugging is pretty straightforward, and the ability to debug your own source code is awesome. The fact that your test and source code are executed in the same context also gives you some powerful advantages as well. You can potentially even expose some internal state to your Cypress app.

Debug a Test with Cypress

Let’s write a test to fill out our registration form. Because we’ll be running this against a live backend, we need to generate the user’s information to avoid re-runs from trying to create new users that already exist. There are trade-offs with this approach. You should probably also clean out the application database before all of your tests start (how you accomplish this is pretty application-specific). Also, if your application requires email confirmation, I recommend you mock that on the backend and automatically set the user as confirmed during tests.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

 Test User Registration with Cypress

Because Cypress allows you to use all the developer tools you’re used to from Google Chrome, you can actually use Cypress as your main application development workflow. If you’ve ever tried to develop a feature that required you to be in a certain state you’ve probably felt the pain of repeatedly refreshing the page and clicking around to get into that state. Instead, you can use cypress to do that and developer your application entirely in Cypress.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Cypress Driven Development

Normally I prefer to test error states using integration or unit tests, but there are some situations where it can be really useful to mock out a response to test a specific scenario in an E2E test. Let’s use the cypress server and route commands to mock a response from our registration request to test the error state.

Simulate HTTP Errors in Cypress Tests

To test user login we need to have a user to login with. We could seed the database with a user and that may be the right choice for your application. In our case though we’ll just go through the registration process again and then login as the user and make the same assertions we made for registration.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Test User Login with Cypress

We’re duplicating a lot of logic between our registration and login tests and not getting any additional confidence, so lets reduce the duplicate logic and time in our tests using cy.request to get a user registered rather than clicking through the application to register a new user.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Create a User with cy.request from Cypress

We’re going to need a newly created user for several tests so let’s move our cy.request command to register a new user into a custom Cypress command so we can use that wherever we need a new user.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Keep Tests Isolated and Focused with Custom Cypress Commands

Use Custom Cypress Command for Reusable Assertions

For most applications you’re going to need to be logged in as a user to interact with the application. Let’s see how we can register as a new user and login as that user to test using the application as a logged in user.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Run Tests as an Authenticated User with Cypress

We’re duplicating a bunch of commands between our new test and the login test and it’s not giving us any more confidence that the application is working properly. So let’s do the same thing we did with registration and make a cy.request command to login with the newly created user to speed up our test and make it more focused.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Use cy.request from Cypress to Authenticate as a New User

It’s pretty likely that we’ll need to login as a particular user for many tests, let’s take our cy.request command and turn it into a custom command to make it easier for the places we’ll be needing a logged in user.

There's been a small breaking change to Cypress Testing Library that affects the code in this video. [Learn more here.](https://github.com/testing-library/cypress-testing-library/releases/tag/v6.0.0)

Use a Custom Cypress Command to Login as a User

Combine Custom Cypress Commands into a Single Custom Command

Because Cypress runs in a real Chrome browser, we can install extensions, like React DevTools. The tricky bit will be to make our application hook up to the extension properly.

Installing Cypress Testing Library

Transcript

Installing Cypress Testing Library