Inconsistent guidance regarding selectors

[dctalbot]

Subject

guides

Description

The Selecting Elements section in Best Practices contradicts the react testing library guide
even though the same doc claims says

our philosophy aligns closely with Testing Library's ethos and approach to writing tests. We strongly endorse their best practices.

I feel that the current guidance to suggest using data- testing attributes is bad and diminishes the value of tests by disregarding semantic HTML. See the link to RTL for more reasons. If a user is clicking a link, it should be an a tag (not a button or anything else), and the test should enforce that.

In the table of example selectors, one of the best options is cy.get('button').contains('Submit').click(), but this example is missing from the table.

The strategy to take here also depends on how much control/ownership a team has over the UI they are testing against. Some teams can afford to be looser or tighter with the selectivity depending on their organizational structure. Another factor to consider is what types of unit/integration tests are supporting their cypress e2e tests. I was disappointed to see the approach recommended without providing this context, and I think this section should be revised. I would offer to lend a hand, but it is an opinionated guide that needs to be authored by a core contributor IMO.