Cucumber Capybara fill_in '' triggering client_side_validations. I fill in happy path values in the Background, and use Scenario Outline examples to create invalid submissions. This will properly trigger validations for both :selenium (firefox and chrome) and :webkit (capybara-webkit) drivers. Note that this is recently changed in capybara >= 2.…

step_definitions-fill_in_blank

When /^I fill in "([^"]*)" with "([^"]*)"$/ do |field, value|

  # special - if ! ignore filling in
  if value.eql? '!'
    return
  else
    f = find_field(field)
    current_value = f.value

    # fill in unless it is already the same, then just leave it as-is
    #   to make sure we behave like a user would in a pre-populated scenario
    fill_in(field, :with => value) unless value.eql? current_value

    # fixed in capybara >= 2.2.0.rc1
    ## trigger the change event when clearing a field.
    #if value.eql? ''
    #  trigger_event_for("##{f[:id]}", :change)
    #end

    # reliably trigger validation in webkit for client_side_validations
    if webkit?
      page.execute_script %Q{ $('form[data-validate]').validate() }
    end
  end
end

support-javascript.rb

# snip
def webkit?()
  [:webkit, :webkit_debug].include? Capybara.javascript_driver
end
# /snip

capybara-webkit seems to be the outlier here, as some fields would trigger validation like first name, but other fields would not like email. The above code seems to obtain consistency across browsers with capybara 2.2.0.rc1