lecture 19 of 190 completed

Reading a failing test

Timeout messages, assertion diffs and the command log. Failures are reports, not riddles.

What you'll learn

  • How to read a Cypress timeout message literally
  • What an assertion difference is telling you
  • How to use the command log to find the cause

When a test fails, most beginners do one of two things. They change something at random and run it again, or they ask a senior engineer. Both are slow.

The truth is that Cypress usually tells you exactly what went wrong. The skill is reading the message literally, word by word. Let me show you the three you will see most often.

The timeout message.

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