visit

End-to-End Only

Visit a remote URL.

caution

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('/') // visits the baseUrl
cy.visit('index.html') // visits the local file "index.html" if baseUrl is null
cy.visit('http://localhost:3000') // specify full URL if baseUrl is null or the domain is different the baseUrl
cy.visit({
  url: '/pages/hello.html',
  method: 'GET',
})

Arguments

url (String)

The URL to visit.

Cypress will prefix the URL with the baseUrl configured in your global configuration if set.

If the baseUrl has not been set, you will need to specify a fully qualified URL or Cypress will attempt to act as your web server. See the prefixes notes for more details.

Note: visiting a new domain requires the Cypress window to reload. You cannot visit different super domains in a single test without the use of cy.origin().

options (Object)

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

By default, the cy.visit() commands' will use the pageLoadTimeout and baseUrl set globally in your configuration.

Option	Default	Description
url	null	The URL to visit. This value will be appended to the baseUrl if one is configured. 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 Note: Network requests are limited by the underlying operating system, and may still time out if this value is increased.

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

Yields

• cy.visit() yields the window object after the page finishes loading.
• It is unsafe to chain further commands that rely on the yielded window after cy.visit().

Let's confirm the window.navigator.language after visiting the site:

cy.visit('/') // yields the window object
  .its('navigator.language') // yields window.navigator.language
  .should('equal', 'en-US') // asserts the expected value

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

Overrides the pageLoadTimeout set globally in your configuration for this page load.

// 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://example.cypress.io/', {
  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]')

info

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
  },
})

info

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

• Bootstrapping 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 parameters

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 https://example.cypress.io/users?page=1&admin=true
cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io/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

Prefixes

Visit is automatically prefixed with baseUrl

Cypress will prefix the URL with the baseUrl if it has been set. Configure baseUrl in the Cypress configuration to prevent repeating yourself in every cy.visit() command.

cypress.config.js

const { defineConfig } = require('cypress')

module.exports = defineConfig({
  e2e: {
    baseUrl: 'http://localhost:3000/#/',
  },
})

cypress.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress'

export default defineConfig({
  e2e: {
    baseUrl: 'http://localhost:3000/#/',
  },
})

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

If you would like to visit a different host when the baseUrl has been set, provide the fully qualified URL you would like to go to.

cy.visit('https://example.cypress.io')

Visit local files

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 (the directory that contains the Cypress configuration file).

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')

Visit local file when baseUrl is set

If you have baseUrl set, but need to visit a local file in a single test or a group of tests, disable the baseUrl using per-test configuration. Imagine this Cypress configuration:

cypress.config.js

const { defineConfig } = require('cypress')

module.exports = defineConfig({
  e2e: {
    baseUrl: 'https://example.cypress.io',
  },
})

cypress.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress'

export default defineConfig({
  e2e: {
    baseUrl: 'https://example.cypress.io',
  },
})

The first test visits the baseUrl, while the second test visits the local file.

it('visits base url', () => {
  cy.visit('/')
  cy.contains('h1', 'Kitchen Sink')
})
it('visits local file', { baseUrl: null }, () => {
  cy.visit('index.html')
  cy.contains('local file')
})

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

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?

See how to override the browser's default user agent.

Routing

Prevent 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.intercept('/users/**', { fixture: '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.intercept() command is 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.intercept() route 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.intercept('/users/**', {...})
cy.visit('http://localhost:8000/#/app')

Cypress will automatically apply the 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 have 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.

Visiting cross-origin sites

After visiting a cross-origin site, to interact with the content, you must use a cy.origin() block.

When visiting a cross-origin site, the onBeforeLoad and onLoad options are not supported.

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
11.0.0	Removed experimentalSessionAndOrigin reference
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