Check if object contains a link in React Testing Library

May 31, 2022

Having the following unit test:

  const MY_URL = 'example.com'
  it('should render MyComponent with url', () => {
    const { getByTestId } = render(<MyComponent />);
    const myLink = getByTestId(TestIds.LINK);
    expect(loggingLink).toContain(MY_URL);
  });

The test fails with the following message:

 Expected value:  "example.com"
 Received object: <div class="m-3" data-testid="test-link"><a href="example.com">my-link</a></div>

So it seems that toContain doesn’t check what is inside of that object. Is there a method to check that the URL is inside the object?

>Solution :

You can get the anchor element with ByRole query. Just search it with link and then check the attribute href:

// I used screen in this case, but you can get getByRole from render.
const anchorElement = screen.getByRole('link');

expect(anchorElement).toBeInTheDocument();

expect(anchorElement).toHaveAttribute('href', 'example.com');

Anchor elements have link role only when href attribute is present, otherwise no corresponding role. You can check more about it here.