Visit a remote URL.

Best Practice

We recommend setting a baseUrl when using cy.visit().

Read about best practices here.

Syntax

cy.visit(url)
cy.visit(url, options)
cy.visit(options)

Usage

Correct Usage

cy.visit('http://localhost:3000')    // Yields the window of the remote page
cy.visit('./pages/hello.html')

Arguments

url (String)

The URL to visit.

Cypress will prefix the URL with the baseUrl configured in your network options if you’ve set one.

You may also specify the relative path of an html file. The path is relative to the root
directory of the Cypress installation. Note that the file:// prefix is not needed.

options (Object)

Pass in an options object to control the behavior of cy.visit().

Option	Default	Description
url	null	The URL to visit. Behaves the same as the url argument.
method	GET	The HTTP method to use in the visit. Can be GET or POST.
body	null	An optional body to send along with a POST request. If it is a string, it will be passed along unmodified. If it is an object, it will be URL encoded to a string and sent with a Content-Type: application/x-www-urlencoded header.
headers	{}	An object that maps HTTP header names to values to be sent along with the request. Note: headers will only be sent for the initial cy.visit() request, not for any subsequent requests.
qs	null	Query parameters to append to the url of the request
log	true	Displays the command in the Command log
auth	null	Adds Basic Authorization headers
failOnStatusCode	true	Whether to fail on response codes other than 2xx and 3xx
onBeforeLoad	function	Called before your page has loaded all of its resources.
onLoad	function	Called once your page has fired its load event.
retryOnStatusCodeFailure	false	Whether Cypress should automatically retry status code errors under the hood. Cypress will retry a request up to 4 times if this is set to true.
retryOnNetworkFailure	true	Whether Cypress should automatically retry transient network errors under the hood. Cypress will retry a request up to 4 times if this is set to true.
timeout	pageLoadTimeout	Time to wait for cy.visit() to resolve before timing out

You can also set all cy.visit() commands’ pageLoadTimeout and baseUrl globally in configuration.

Yields

• cy.visit() yields the window object after the page finishes loading.

Examples

URL

Visit a local server running on http://localhost:8000

cy.visit() resolves when the remote page fires its load event.

cy.visit('http://localhost:8000')

Options

Change the default timeout

// Wait 30 seconds for page 'load' event
cy.visit('/index.html', { timeout: 30000 })

Add basic auth headers

Cypress will automatically apply the right authorization headers if you’re attempting to visit an application that requires Basic Authentication.

Provide the username and password in the auth object. Then all subsequent requests matching the origin you’re testing will have these attached at the network level.

cy.visit('https://www.acme.com/', {
  auth: {
    username: 'wile',
    password: 'coyote'
  }
})

You can also provide the username and password directly in the URL.

// this is the same thing as providing the auth object
cy.visit('https://wile:[email protected]')

Cypress will automatically attach this header at the network proxy level, outside of the browser. Therefore you will not see this header in the Dev Tools.

Provide an onBeforeLoad callback function

onBeforeLoad is called as soon as possible, before your page has loaded all of its resources. Your scripts will not be ready at this point, but it’s a great hook to potentially manipulate the page.

cy.visit('http://localhost:3000/#dashboard', {
  onBeforeLoad: (contentWindow) => {
    // contentWindow is the remote page's window object
  }
})

Check out our example recipes using cy.visit()‘s onBeforeLoad option to:

• Bootstraping your App
• Set a token to localStorage for login during Single Sign On
• Stub window.fetch

Provide an onLoad callback function

onLoad is called once your page has fired its load event. All of the scripts, stylesheets, html and other resources are guaranteed to be available at this point.

cy.visit('http://localhost:3000/#/users', {
  onLoad: (contentWindow) => {
    // contentWindow is the remote page's window object
    if (contentWindow.angular) {
      // do something
    }
  }
})

Add query paramaters

You can provide query parameters as an object to cy.visit() by passing qs to options.

// visits http://localhost:3500/users?page=1&role=admin
cy.visit('http://localhost:3500/users', {
  qs: {
    page: '1',
    role: 'admin'
  }
})

The parameters passed to qs will be merged into existing query parameters on the url.

// visits http://example.com/users?page=1&admin=true
cy.visit('http://example.com/users?page=1', {
  qs: { admin: true }
})

Submit a form

To send a request that looks like a user submitting an HTML form, use a POST method with a body containing the form values:

cy.visit({
  url: 'http://localhost:3000/cgi-bin/newsletterSignup',
  method: 'POST',
  body: {
    name: 'George P. Burdell',
    email: '[email protected]'
  }
})

Notes

Redirects

Visit will automatically follow redirects

// we aren't logged in, so our web server
// redirected us to /login
cy.visit('http://localhost:3000/admin')
cy.url().should('match', /login/)

Protocol

Protocol can be omitted from common hosts

Cypress automatically prepends the http:// protocol to common hosts. If you’re not using one of these 3 hosts, then make sure to provide the protocol.

cy.visit('localhost:3000') // Visits http://localhost:3000
cy.visit('0.0.0.0:3000')   // Visits http://0.0.0.0:3000
cy.visit('127.0.0.1:3000') // Visits http://127.0.0.1:3000

Web Server

Cypress can optionally act as your web server

Cypress will automatically attempt to serve your files if you don’t provide a host and baseUrl is not defined. The path should be relative to your project’s root folder (where the cypress.json file is generated by default).

Having Cypress serve your files is useful in smaller projects and example apps, but isn’t recommended for production apps. It is always better to run your own server and provide the url to Cypress.

cy.visit('app/index.html')

Prefixes

Visit is automatically prefixed with baseUrl

Configure baseUrl in the your configuration file (cypress.json by default) to prevent repeating yourself in every cy.visit() command.

{
  "baseUrl": "http://localhost:3000/#/"
}

cy.visit('dashboard') // Visits http://localhost:3000/#/dashboard

Window

Visit will always yield the remote page’s window object when it resolves

cy.visit('index.html').then((contentWindow) => {
  // contentWindow is the remote page's window object
})

User agent

Trying to change the User-Agent? You can set the userAgent as a configuration value in your configuration file.

Routing

Prevent XHR / Ajax requests before a remote page initially loads

One common scenario Cypress supports is visiting a remote page and also preventing any Ajax requests from immediately going out.

You may think this works:

// this code may not work depending on implementation
cy.visit('http://localhost:8000/#/app')
cy.server()
cy.route('/users/**', 'fx:users')

But if your app makes a request upon being initialized, the above code will not work. cy.visit() will resolve once its load event fires. The cy.server() and cy.route() commands are not processed until after cy.visit() resolves.

Many applications will have already begun routing, initialization, and requests by the time the cy.visit() in the above code resolves. Therefore creating a cy.server() will happen too late, and Cypress will not process the requests.

Luckily Cypress supports this use case. Reverse the order of the commands:

// this code is probably what you want
cy.server()
cy.route('/users/**', {...})
cy.visit('http://localhost:8000/#/app')

Cypress will automatically apply the server and routes to the very next cy.visit() and does so immediately before any of your application code runs.

Rules

Requirements

• cy.visit() requires being chained off of cy.

• cy.visit() requires the response to be content-type: text/html.

• cy.visit() requires the response code to be 2xx after following redirects.

• cy.visit() requires the load load event to eventually fire.

Assertions

• cy.visit() will automatically wait for assertions you've chained to pass.

Timeouts

• cy.visit() can time out waiting for the page to fire its load event.

• cy.visit() can time out waiting for assertions you've added to pass.

Command Log

Visit example application in a beforeEach

beforeEach(() => {
  cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io/commands/viewport')
})

The commands above will display in the Command Log as:

When clicking on visit within the command log, the console outputs the following:

History

Version	Changes
3.5.0	Added support for options qs
3.3.0	Added support for options retryOnStatusCodeFailure and retryOnNetworkFailure
3.2.0	Added options url, method, body, and headers
1.1.3	Added option failOnStatusCode
0.18.2	Automatically send Accept: text/html,*/* request header
0.18.2	Automatically send User-Agent header
0.17.0	Cannot cy.visit() two different super domains in a single test
0.6.8	Added option log
0.4.3	Added option onBeforeLoad
< 0.3.3	cy.visit() command added

See also

• cy.go()
• cy.reload()
• cy.request()
• Recipe: Bootstrapping your App
• Recipe: Logging In - Single Sign on
• Recipe: Stubbing window.fetch