Learn how to test file downloads for your Cypress test running on BrowserStack.

Overview

In Cypress, you can download a file from a web app using the cypress-downloadfile NPM package. The downloaded file is available in the ./Downloads directory within the BrowserStack machine running your Cypress tests. If such a directory does not exist, Cypress creates it and saves the file in that directory.

Depending on the type of file that you download, you can verify this file using:

• cy.readFile: For files such as .doc, .csv, .pdf, etc.
• cy.verifyDownload: For for files such as .zip, .png, .jpg, etc.

In this guide, you will learn how to:

Download the file in Cypress

Use the following steps to download a file from within your Cypress test:

1. Install the node module using the following command:

   npm i --save-dev cypress-downloadfile
   

   Alternatively, you can specify the npm_dependencies in browserstack.json as shown in the following example:
   

   browserstack.json

   "run_settings": {
        ...
        "npm_dependencies": {
            "cypress-downloadfile": "^1.2.1",
        },
        ...
    },
   

2. Update the commands.js file with the downloadFileCommand dependency in the cypress/support directory using the following code:

   cypress/support/commands.js

   require('cypress-downloadfile/lib/downloadFileCommand');
   

3. Update the index.js file with the downloadFile plugin support in the cypress/plugins directory using the following code:

   cypress/plugins/index.js

   const {downloadFile} = require('cypress-downloadfile/lib/addPlugin');
   module.exports = (on, config) => {
      on('task', {downloadFile});
   }  
   

4. Use the cy.downloadFile command in your test script to download a file from a specific URL as shown in the following code:
   

   context('downloadFile', () => {
    it('download file in mentioned dir', () => {
      cy.downloadFile('','Downloads','cypress-example.doc')
    })
   })
   

   The Downloads argument in the above sample script downloads the specified file to the ./Downloads directory within the BrowserStack machine running your Cypress tests. You can also specify a different download directory.