how should I get webrat to test the contents of a textarea

Question

I'm trying to work out the right syntax to have webrat check the contents of a textarea in a form.

I can check the presence of a textarea with

response.should have_selector('textarea')

but the contains method appears to only check the visible text in the response. There are capybara methods for checking the contents of a textarea, but I'm working on a large existing set of specs for Capybara, which appear to all be in WebRat, and when I try to use Capybara methods like have_field I keep getting the following error:

RSpec::Expectations::ExpectationNotMetError Exception: expected field "textarea" to return something

I've found examples that do things like the following:

response.should have_selector('textarea', :content => 'blah')

but strangely this causes by debugger to continue and I haven't been able to test it effectively as a solution yet.

Any tips or advice on the correct approach much appreciated

here's the stacktrace I get testing in the debugger

(rdb:1) p response.should have_selector('textarea#article_body_and_extended', :content =>  text)
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/interface.rb:70:in `printf'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/interface.rb:70:in `print'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:375:in `print'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/command.rb:165:in `print'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/command.rb:183:in `rescue in debug_eval'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/command.rb:173:in `debug_eval'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/commands/eval.rb:47:in `block in execute'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/commands/eval.rb:19:in `run_with_binding'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/commands/eval.rb:46:in `execute'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:275:in `one_cmd'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:261:in `block (2 levels) in process_commands'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:260:in `each'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:260:in `block in process_commands'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:253:in `catch'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:253:in `process_commands'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug19-0.11.6/cli/ruby-debug/processor.rb:173:in `at_line'
(eval):5:in `block in at_line'
<internal:prelude>:10:in `synchronize'
(eval):3:in `at_line'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/ruby-debug-base19-0.11.25/lib/ruby-debug-base.rb:55:in `at_line'
/home/ubuntu/Documents/hw5/typo/spec/controllers/admin/content_controller_spec.rb:509:in `block (4 levels) in <top (required)>'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example.rb:113:in `instance_eval'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example.rb:113:in `block in run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example.rb:253:in `with_around_each_hooks'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example.rb:110:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:378:in `block in run_examples'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:374:in `map'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:374:in `run_examples'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:360:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `block in run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `map'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `block in run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `map'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/example_group.rb:361:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/command_line.rb:28:in `block (2 levels) in run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/command_line.rb:28:in `map'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/command_line.rb:28:in `block in run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/reporter.rb:34:in `report'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/command_line.rb:25:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/runner.rb:69:in `run'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rspec-core-2.11.1/lib/rspec/core/runner.rb:8:in `block in autorun'F

and then the debugger continues and the check fails:

    text = @article.body + @article_for_merging.body + "\n&lt;<!--more-->&gt;\n" +@article.extended
    debugger
    response.should have_selector('textarea#article_body_and_extended', :content =>  text)

even though when I do a regex on the response body I get a match

(rdb:1) p text
"A content with several datasomething we will merge&lt;<!--more-->&gt;extended content for fun"
(rdb:1) p response.body =~ text
TypeError Exception: type mismatch: String given
(rdb:1) p response.body =~ /text/
218

what I'd really like is a way just to pull that actual content of the textarea out ... although I'm getting the sense I should be writing a model spec instead of a controller spec ...

Answer 1

so I've kind of given up on getting this working. I think I tracked down the right syntax as this:

response.should have_selector('textarea', :name => "article[body_and_extended]",:content =>  text)

where I've set text to be the expected content. I spend a good hour checking that I had precisely the text that was in the textarea, but couldn't make it work - maybe an encoding issue or something. However what does work is this:

    text = @article.body + @article_for_merging.body + "\n<!--more-->\n" +@article.extended+@article_for_merging.extended
    position = response.body =~ /#{Regexp.quote(text)}/
    position.should_not be_nil

so I tempted to move on and come back to this later ...