Cypress downloads a blank PDF file from the UI

Current behavior:

Cypress downloads a blank PDF

Desired behavior:

Cypress should download the same PDF as downloaded manually

Test code to reproduce

Complete reproducible code with ReadMe is uploaded here: _https://github.com/abhidp/cypress-pdf-download_

Tests will run against the url: _https://receipts.uat-slyp.com.au/WRA-ba8511d6f86fcd488cc335a356ccadd2d37f1c30_

Instructions:

• clone this repo : git clone https://github.com/abhidp/cypress-pdf-download.git
• install dependencies: npm install
• open Cypress runner : npm run cy:open
• choose Chrome as the browser
• execute test : pdfExport.spec.js
• Test#1 and Test#3 will pass
• Test#2 will fail because the downloaded PDF file is blank which is what this issue is all about

Problem:

When the above steps are executed in Cypress, it downloads a blank PDF file: /cypress/downloads/SlypReceipt.pdf When manually downloaded, you get the correct PDF file: /cypress/downloads/SlypReceipt_Working.pdf

Actual Result: Cypress downloads a blank PDF Expected Result: Cypress should download the same PDF as downloaded manually

Replication steps to download the PDF manually:

• navigate to the above url
• click on the Kebab menu (three vertical dots) at the top right corner of the page
• click on Export as PDF option and save it to your local disk

PDF downloaded by Cypress	PDF downloaded manually

Versions

Macbook Pro:

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.15.5
BuildVersion:   19F101

Cypress: 4.12.1

Browser:

Google Chrome is up to date
Version 84.0.4147.105 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[jennifer-shehane]

I can recreate this from the repo provided - the PDF downloaded within the Cypress Test Runner is blank.

[Lukasz-Debiec]

I got stuck for 2 days on this and in my case I had to explicitly tell the API what type of encoding I’m expecting to get:

cy.request({ url: 'your-url', encoding: 'binary' }).then((res) => { cy.writeFile('cypress/downloads/whatever.pdf', res.body, { encoding: 'binary' }) })

Check the request object, I’m explicitly saying ‘encoding: ‘binary’’ in request and in writeFile command. Without one or both of them, I was getting blank document. Hopefully someone will find it helpful.