Writing Your First E2E Test

Add a test file

Assuming you've successfully installed Cypress and opened Cypress, now it's time to add your first test. We're going to do this with the Create new empty spec button.

On clicking it, you should see a dialog where you can enter the name of your new spec. Just accept the default name for now.

The newly-generated spec is displayed in a confirmation dialog. Just go ahead and close it with the ✕ button.

Once we've created that file, you should see it immediately displayed in the list of end-to-end specs. Cypress monitors your spec files for any changes and automatically displays any changes.

Even though we haven't written any code yet - that's okay - let's click on your new spec and watch Cypress launch it. Spoiler alert: it's probably going to FAIL. Don't worry, it's just because you haven't set up Cypress to visit a page in your app yet! Let's try something different.

Write your first test

Now it's time to write your first test. We're going to:

1. Write your first passing test.
2. Update it so it fails.
3. Watch Cypress reload in real time.

Open up your favorite IDE and replace the contents of your spec with the code below.

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('Does not do much!', () => {
    expect(true).to.equal(true)
  })
})

Once you save this change you should see the browser reload.

Although it doesn't do anything useful, this is our first passing test! ✅

Over in the Command Log you'll see Cypress display the suite, the test and your first assertion (which should be passing in green).

Now let's write our first failing test.

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('Does not do much!', () => {
    expect(true).to.equal(false)
  })
})

Once you save again, you'll see Cypress display the failing test in red since true does not equal false.

Cypress also displays the stack trace and the code frame where the assertion failed (when available). You can click on the blue file link to open the file where the error occurred in your preferred file opener. To read more about the error's display, read about Debugging Errors.

Cypress gives you a visual structure of suites, tests, and assertions. Soon you'll also see commands, page events, network requests, and more.

Write a real test

A solid test generally covers 3 phases:

1. Set up the application state.
2. Take an action.
3. Make an assertion about the resulting application state.

You might also see this phrased as "Given, When, Then", or "Arrange, Act, Assert". But the idea is: First you put the application into a specific state, then you take some action in the application that causes it to change, and finally you check the resulting application state.

Today, we'll take a narrow view of these steps and map them cleanly to Cypress commands:

1. Visit a web page.
2. Query for an element.
3. Interact with that element.
4. Assert about the content on the page.

Step 1: Visit a page

First, let's visit a web page. We will visit our Kitchen Sink application in this example so that you can try Cypress out without needing to worry about finding a page to test.

We can pass the URL we want to visit to cy.visit(). Let's replace our previous test with the one below that actually visits a page:

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('Visits the Kitchen Sink', () => {
    cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')
  })
})

Save the file and switch back over to the Cypress Test Runner. You might notice a few things:

1. The Command Log now shows the new VISIT action.
2. The Kitchen Sink application has been loaded into the App Preview pane.
3. The test is green, even though we made no assertions.
4. The VISIT displays a blue pending state until the page finishes loading.

Had this request come back with a non 2xx status code such as 404 or 500, or if there was a JavaScript error in the application's code, the test would have failed.

Step 2: Query for an element

Now that we've got a page loaded, we need to take some action on it. Why don't we click a link on the page? Sounds easy enough, let's go look for one we like... how about type?

To find this element by its contents, we'll use cy.contains().

Let's add it to our test and see what happens:

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('finds the content "type"', () => {
    cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')

    cy.contains('type')
  })
})

Our test should now display CONTAINS in the Command Log and still be green.

Even without adding an assertion, we know that everything is okay! This is because many of Cypress' commands are built to fail if they don't find what they're expecting to find. This is known as a Default Assertion.

To verify this, replace type with something not on the page, like hype. You'll notice the test goes red, but only after about 4 seconds!

Can you see what Cypress is doing under the hood? It's automatically waiting and retrying because it expects the content to eventually be found in the DOM. It doesn't immediately fail!

Before we add another command - let's get this test back to passing. Replace hype with type.

Step 3: Click an element

Ok, now we want to click on the link we found. How do we do that? Add a .click() command to the end of the previous command, like so:

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('clicks the link "type"', () => {
    cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')

    cy.contains('type').click()
  })
})

You can almost read it like a little story! Cypress calls this "chaining" and we chain together commands to build tests that really express what the app does in a declarative way.

Also note that the App Preview pane has updated further after the click, following the link and showing the destination page:

Now we can assert something about this new page!

Step 4: Make an assertion

Let's make an assertion about something on the new page we clicked into. Perhaps we'd like to make sure the new URL is the expected URL. We can do that by looking up the URL and chaining an assertion to it with .should().

Here's what that looks like:

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('clicking "type" navigates to a new url', () => {
    cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')

    cy.contains('type').click()

    // Should be on a new URL which
    // includes '/commands/actions'
    cy.url().should('include', '/commands/actions')
  })
})

Adding more commands and assertions

We are not limited to a single interaction and assertion in a given test. In fact, many interactions in an application may require multiple steps and are likely to change your application state in more than one way.

We can continue the interactions and assertions in this test by adding another chain to interact with and verify the behavior of elements on this new page.

We can use cy.get() to select an element based on its class. Then we can use the .type() command to enter text into the selected input. Finally, we can verify that the value of the input reflects the text that was typed with another .should().

In general, the structure of your test should flow query -> query -> command or assertion(s). It's best practice not to chain anything after an action command; for more details on why this is, see our guide on retry-ability.

describe('My First Test', () => {
  it('Gets, types and asserts', () => {
    cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')

    cy.contains('type').click()

    // Should be on a new URL which
    // includes '/commands/actions'
    cy.url().should('include', '/commands/actions')

    // Get an input, type into it
    cy.get('.action-email').type('fake@email.com')

    //  Verify that the value has been updated
    cy.get('.action-email').should('have.value', 'fake@email.com')
  })
})

And there you have it: a short test in Cypress that visits a page, finds and clicks a link, verifies the URL and then verifies the behavior of an element on the new page. If we read it out loud, it might sound like:

1. Visit: https://example.cypress.io
2. Find the element with content: type
3. Click on it
4. Get the URL
5. Assert it includes: /commands/actions
6. Get the input with the action-email class
7. Type fake@email.com into the input
8. Get the input again and assert that it reflects the new value

Or in the Given, When, Then syntax:

1. Given a user visits https://example.cypress.io
2. When they click the link labeled type
3. And they type "fake@email.com" into the .action-email input
4. Then the URL should include /commands/actions
5. And the .action-email input has "fake@email.com" as its value

And hey, this is a very clean test! We didn't have to say anything about how things work, just that we'd like to verify a particular series of events and outcomes.

Record Tests with Cypress Studio

If you want a minimal code approach to creating tests, you can use Cypress Studio to record your browser interactions and generate tests. Visit our guide for more information.

Next steps

• Take our free Testing your first application course.
• Learn more about the Cypress App UI.
• Start testing your app.
• Set up intelligent code completion for Cypress commands and assertions.
• Record your test results to Cypress Cloud for advanced features like parallelization, flake detection, and more.
• Check out the Cypress Real World App (RWA) for practical demonstrations of Cypress testing practices, configuration, and strategies in a real-world project.
• Search Cypress's documentation to quickly find what you need.