Why isn't my 'if' statement working in my Cypress test

Question

I'm trying to add an 'if' statement into my login test as there are two login pages that can be loaded. The test below is failing when it can't find the text 'Not your account?', when it should be continuing to the login steps. I think this is happening because both login pages have the same elements 'a.auth0-lock-alternative-link' but contain different text.

How can I create an if statement in the test to fulfill both these scenarios?

describe('My Login Test2', function (){
  it('Visit Risk App Landing Page', function (){
    cy.visit('https://bvt-riskassessment.lmkcloud.net')
    cy.get('button').click()
    if(cy.get('a.auth0-lock-alternative-link').contains('Not your account?'))
    {
      cy.get('a.auth0-lock-alternative-link').contains('Not your account?').click();
    }
    cy.fixture('loginUser').as('myUserFixture');
    cy.get('@myUserFixture').then(user => {
      cy.get('input.auth0-lock-input').first().type(user.email);
      cy.get('input.auth0-lock-input').last().type(user.password);
      cy.get('button').click()
      cy.url().should('eq','https://bvt-riskassessment.lmkcloud.net/workflow')
    })
  })
})

Answer 1

Here:

if(cy.get('a.auth0-lock-alternative-link').contains('Not your account?'))
{
  cy.get('a.auth0-lock-alternative-link').contains('Not your account?').click();
}

to evaluate expression in if statement you call contains('Not your account?') method. Since contains method has the default assertion that makes your test fail once the element does not contain the required value (if you will try to pass the test manually step by step you will realize that there is no such element when you see log-in form the first time).

In other words, contains is not a Boolean function, it just looks up and returns the element that matches the specified conditions. Since there is no matching elements on the page, your code in if(...) fails.

You should query element's text and then check if it meets your conditions. Check this post for details. Pay attention to "If you need to hold a reference or compare values of text".