Cypress loads wrong page on start

[davorbadrov]

Current behavior:

When I try to run cypress tests (the default examples that come after installing cypress) it starts the app properly, but the tests load the wrong page.
It doesn't load the Cypress test page inside the browser, it loads a html file I have in project.

The page that the browser opens is saved in <project_dir>/views/layout.html
whenever I run npx cypress open inside the project_dir.

The project directory looks like this:

→ tree
.
├── cypress
│   ├── fixtures
│   │   └── example.json
│   ├── integration
│   │   └── examples
│   │       ├── actions.spec.js
│   │       ├── aliasing.spec.js
│   │       ├── assertions.spec.js
│   │       ├── connectors.spec.js
│   │       ├── cookies.spec.js
│   │       ├── cypress_api.spec.js
│   │       ├── files.spec.js
│   │       ├── local_storage.spec.js
│   │       ├── location.spec.js
│   │       ├── misc.spec.js
│   │       ├── navigation.spec.js
│   │       ├── network_requests.spec.js
│   │       ├── querying.spec.js
│   │       ├── spies_stubs_clocks.spec.js
│   │       ├── traversal.spec.js
│   │       ├── utilities.spec.js
│   │       ├── viewport.spec.js
│   │       ├── waiting.spec.js
│   │       └── window.spec.js
│   ├── plugins
│   │   └── index.js
│   └── support
│       ├── commands.js
│       └── index.js
├── cypress.json
└── views
    └── layout.html

Inside of it I run npx cypress open.

The cypress app opens propery:

And this is what opens inside of the browser cypress opens when I run any of the example tests:

Cypress console output:

→ npx cypress open
GET /__/ 200 40.683 ms - 352
GET /favicon.ico 302 9.179 ms - 26
GET /__/ 304 8.686 ms - -
HEAD / 500 53.545 ms - -
HEAD / 500 51.452 ms - -
HEAD / 500 50.321 ms - -

Desired behavior:

I expected that it would load the cypress app with the list of tests on the left side and the content of a page open in the test runner to the right.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Create a directory
2. Inside it add views/layout.html with whatever content
3. Inside the root directory run npx cypress open
4. Run any of the cypress tests
5. This opens views/layout.html for me

Versions

Issue happens on:

Cypress 3.1.2 and 3.1.3
OS: OSX El Capitan (10.11.6)
Browser: Chrome 70, Canary 73 and Electron 59

I can test it later in the day on my linux machine to confirm if it happens there as well.

Edit: Edited for clarity

[jennifer-shehane]

I am able to reproduce this behavior. I created a repo that can be run to exhibit this behavior here: https://github.com/jennifer-shehane/weird-layout-bug/tree/master

[flotwig]

It looks like something to do with the way Express handles views. Express's default setting for 'views' is the 'views' directory. I noticed that this error occurs if you have a file named 'views/layout.html', but not if you have a file named 'views/layout2.html'.

If you do app.set("views", "__CY_THIS_DIR_WILL_NEVER_EXIST") while setting up the Cypress Express app, this issue no longer occurs, and I have an open PR for that at #3160. However, I'm still not sure exactly why this is happening at all.

[cypress-bot]

Released in 3.1.5.