Asserting text using Cypress

If you’re using Cypress, eventually you will have to assert some text. However, they provide at least three methods to do that, and from the documentation is not clear the difference between:

• .should("have.text", "expected text goes here")
• .should("include.text", "expected text goes here")
• .should("contain.text", "expected text goes here")

Do they all accept text? Some accept regex? Exact match or substring?

This is a summary of the answer I received:

• have.text: exact text match
• include(s).text: substring match
• contain(s).text: substring match

Let’s see it in action with some examples. Assume we want to assert the heading of a webpage. When you select that element with cy.get("h1") you get the text “This is a heading”. So if you do:

• .should("have.text", "This is a heading") passes ✅
• .should("have.text", "heading") fails ❌
• .should("include.text", "This is a heading") passes ✅
• .should("include.text", "heading") passes ✅
• "contain.text" is as alias for "include.text", so expect the same results