getBy* with .should('not.exist')

The behavior of cypress-testing-library’s getBy queries is a bit different than the cypress built-in .get() method: the built-in will retry should('not.exist') until it times out, but the getBy queries timeout on the query. One workaround is to change to getBy to queryBy, but this requires a little bit of extra dom-testing-library knowledge that can confuse people coming from Cypress, and still doesn’t retry.

Alternative

// This doesn't work
cy.getByTestId('my-item').should('not.exist');

// This works for verifying an element isn't present *right now*
cy.queryByTestId('my-item').should('be.null');

// This should retry but does not
cy.queryByTestId('my-item').should('not.exist');

Idea

It might make sense for queryBy* to actually be aliased to getBy* in the cypress context?

EDIT: actually the .should() chain should really trigger a retry of the parent command. Maybe custom commands don’t hook into .should correctly?

Related to #23, https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/3109

[alexkrolick]

I’m thinking Cypress should support hooking into the retry mechanism for custom commands. Filed an issue to discuss: https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/3109

[kentcdodds]

I’d be fine if anyone wants to try to make that happen. Then we can switch over to a built-in API when it becomes available.