rspec_hpricot_matchers

An implementation of have_tag(), as in rspec_on_rails, but sitting atop Hpricot rather than merely wrapping assert_select().

Usage

As its first argument, have_tag() accepts any CSS or XPath selectors which are supported by Hpricot.

body.should have_tag('form[@action*=session]')
body.should have_tag('ul > li + li')

Expectations can be placed upon the inner text of the matched element by providing another argument, which should be either a String or a Regexp:

body.should have_tag('h1', 'Welcome')
body.should have_tag('p', /a very important blurb/i)

Expectations can be placed upon the number of matched elements by passing an options hash:

body.should have_tag('abbr', :count => 1)   # exactly one
body.should have_tag('dt',   :minimum => 4) # at least 4
body.should have_tag('dd',   :maximum => 4) # at most 4
body.should have_tag('a.outgoing', /rspec/i, :count => 2)

The :count key also accepts a Range, making the following equivalent:

body.should have_tag('tr',   :count => 3..5)
body.should have_tag('tr',   :minimum => 3,
                             :maximum => 5)

The usage of with_tag(), however, is no longer supported. Instead, a block passed to have_tag() will have each matched element successively yielded to it. If none of the blocks return without raising an ExpectationNotMetError, the outer have_tag() is treated as having failed:

body.should have_tag('thead') do |thead|
  thead.should have_tag('th', :count => 5)
end

This also allows arbitrary expectations to be applied from within the block, such as:

body.should have_tag('dl dd.sha1') do |dd|
  dd.inner_text.length.should == 40
end

Notes

Currently, this implementation does not support substitution values as assert_select did (by way of HTML::Selector):

# Not yet supported:
body.should have_tag('li[class=?]', dom_class)
body.should have_tag('tr.person#?', /^person-\d+$/)

I personally rarely use these, and Hpricot’s advanced selectors make them mostly useless, as far as I can tell, so I am unlikely to implement them myself.

This have_tag() further differs from the assert_select-based implementation in that the nested have_tag() calls must all pass on a single selected element in order to be true. This was a source of confusion in RSpec ticket #316. There is a spec covering this case if you need an example.