readme.md

Rspec custom matchers for xml using Nokogiri XPath selector and optional content to match within selection. See matcher_spec.rb for usage.

Place have_xml.rb in your {Rails.root}/spec/support/matchers directory

Adapted from: Testing XML with rspec, xpath and libxml

have_xml.rb

require 'nokogiri'
RSpec::Matchers.define :have_xml do |xpath, text|
  match do |body|
    doc = Nokogiri::XML::Document.parse(body)
    nodes = doc.xpath(xpath)
    nodes.empty?.should be_false
    if text
      nodes.each do |node|
        node.content.should == text
      end
    end
    true
  end

  failure_message_for_should do |body|
    "expected to find xml tag #{xpath} in:\n#{body}"
  end

  failure_message_for_should_not do |response|
    "expected not to find xml tag #{xpath} in:\n#{body}"
  end

  description do
    "have xml tag #{xpath}"
  end
end

matcher_spec.rb

describe "thing" do
  context 'xml'
    before do
      get "/a_thing", {:format => :xml}
    end

    it "has a thing" do
      response.body.should have_xml '/xpath/to/match' "content with xpath selector"
    end

    it "does not have another thing" do
      response.body.should_not have_xml '/xpath/to/disallow' "content with xpath selector"
    end
  end
end

I've made updates here

• with expect syntax,
• including @benissimo "CDATA unsensitive parsing feature"