Conditional testing and control flow in Cypress

October 30, 2017

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By Brian Mann

Conditional testing refers to the common programming pattern where you perform one action, or a different one. It’s also known as control flow. Typically this is expressed as: If X, then Y, else Z.

Many of our users come into our chat asking how they can do “conditional testing” in Cypress.

The question is usually something like this:

I want to do something if the element exists, and do something different if the element doesn’t exist. How do I do that in Cypress?

This question may seem simple on the surface - but there is actually considerable complexity to doing this correctly. This question deserved much more than a simple answer, so we made the answer a part of the “Core Concepts” in our docs.

In the guide we talk about:

  • Why this pattern is so complex
  • Creating deterministic tests
  • Avoiding writing flaky tests
  • Strategies you can use today

Please check out our new guide for Conditional Testing.