Ensure an element is not present with Capybara

Question

Using Capybara, I need to assert that a form element is not present, for example, 'Then I should not see the "Username" text field'. As find throws an exception if the element isn't found, this is the best I've come up with. Is there a better way?

Then /^I should not see the "([^\"]+)" ([^\s]+) field$/ do |name, type|
  begin
    # Capybara throws an exception if the element is not found
    find(:xpath, "//input[@type='#{type}' and @name='#{name}']")
    # We get here if we find it, so we want this step to fail
    false
  rescue Capybara::ElementNotFound
    # Return true if there was an element not found exception
    true
  end 
end

I'm new to Capybara, so I may be missing something obvious.

Answer 1

You can do this by making use of capybaras has_no_selector? method combined with rspecs magic matchers. You can then use it in this way:

 page.should have_no_selector(:xpath, "//input[@type='#{type}' and @name='#{name}']")

You can see more details of the assertions you can perform on the capybara documentation page here under the section entitled Querying