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Mounting Components

Many tests, regardless of framework or type follow a similar format: Arrange, Act, and Assert. This pattern "Arrange, Act, Assert" was first coined in 2001 by Bill Wilke and is explained thoroughly in his blog post "3A - Arrange, Act, Assert".

When it comes to component testing, mounting your component is where we Arrange our component under test. It is analogous to visiting a page in an end-to-end test.

This section covers how to mount simple Vue components in a Cypress test -- like Buttons, SVGs, Icons, or a Stepper component.

If your component uses plugins, mixins, global directives, network requests, or other environmental setup, you will need to do additional work to get your component mounting. This is covered later.

To follow along with this section, you can download the latest version of Cypress and create a Vue application by following the Quickstart Guide.

What is the Mount Function?​

For each front-end framework Cypress supports, we ship a mount function. It can be imported from the cypress package. It is responsible for rendering your component within Cypress's sandboxed iframe as well as handling any framework-specific cleanup.

import { mount } from "cypress/vue";

The Simplest Usage of Mount​

You'll import the component you want to test and then use Cypress's normal API to interact with the DOM rendered by your component.

If you're coming from Vue Test Utils, please note that the return value of mount is not used.

Cypress Component tests can and should be agnostic to the framework internals and accessing the wrapper that Vue Test Utils relies on is rarely necessary.

import { mount } from "cypress/vue";
import Stepper from "./Stepper.vue";

describe("<Stepper>", () => {
  it("is visible", () => {
    mount(Stepper);
    cy.get("[data-testid=stepper]")
      .should("be.visible")
      .and("contain.text", "1");
  });
});

Making cy.mount Available Anywhere​

While you can import the mount function at the top of any file, you'll be using it in every single component test, so we recommend adding it as a Cypress Custom Command, where it will be available on the global cy API whenever you need it.

This should have been done for you if you followed the automatic configuration wizard in the Launchpad, or if you scaffolded your project using Vue's official starter.

Your component support file should look something like the code block below. It will have registered the mount method as a Cypress Command and it will be available in any Cypress test under cy.mount.

If you're using providers, plugins, directives, or other global app-level setup in your Vue app, you'll want to follow the "Customizing cy.mount guide for Vue".

// cypress/support/component.js
import { mount } from "cypress/vue";

Cypress.Commands.add("mount", mount);

cy.mount; // this command now works in any test!

Optional JSX Support​

The mount command supports the Vue Test Utils object syntax, but it can also be used with Vue's JSX syntax (provided that you've configured your bundler to support transpiling JSX or TSX files).

The object syntax for the mount function is identical to the Vue Test Utils version you'd use with your application's version of Vue.

Other Mounting Options​

Cypress and Testing Library​

Cypress loves the Testing Library project. We use Testing Library internally at Cypress! Cypress best practices align closely with Testing Library's ethos and approach to writing tests, and we strongly endorse their best practices.

In particular, if you're looking for more resources to understand how we recommend you approach testing your components, look to:

For fans of Testing Library, you'll want to install @testing-library/cypress instead of the @testing-library/vue package.

npm i -D @testing-library/cypress

The setup instructions are the same for E2E and Component Testing. Within your component support file, import the custom commands.

// cypress/support/component.js
// cy.findBy* commands will now be available.
// This calls Cypress.Commands.add under the hood
import "@testing-library/cypress/add-commands";

For TypeScript users, types are packaged along with the Testing Library package. Refer to the latest setup instructions in the Testing Library docs.

Cypress and Vue Test Utils​

Vue Test Utils is the official low-level testing library of Vue.

Cypress's mount command is a thin wrapper around Vue Test Utils and shares an identical signature.

The Cypress docs will cover many common use-cases for how to test Vue components, however if you still need more information, please refer to the Vue Test Utils documentation.

Next Steps​

Now that we have our component mounted, next we will learn how to write tests against it.