Changing the value of a session variable in RSpec/Capybara/Selenium - ruby-on-rails

I'm starting to write feature specs for a Rails application using Rspec with Capybara and Selenium to drive the browser.
While executing one of the specs I want to change the value of a session variable. Eg: I want to set session[:user_id]=123 so that I can test features in my application without having to go via the login screen every time.
When using Capybara with the default rack_test driver, the rack_session_access gem works for accessing the session. But it doesn't seem to work when using the Selenium driver.
And yes, this question has been asked before, but no satisfactory answer has been given.

Short answer, you don't. Longer answer, that's completely against the point of feature tests which are meant to be end to end.
That being said, if for performance reasons you want to short circuit the login, most authentication libraries provide a test mode that will allow you to do that - devise via the Warden TestHelpers for instance

Related

How can I use VCR with Rails 5.1 system tests?

Many things on the web seem to suggest that VCR can be used with Capybara.
I have three problems.
This doesn't make much sense to me, because the test driver and the application code don't share memory.
I'm not finding full recipes on how to set this up.
I'm finding bits and pieces of how people have set this up, but it's outside of the context of rails 5.1, which does the capybara setup behind the scenes.
How do I configure a Rails 5.1 app, Capybara, and VCR to work together for system tests?
(My headless browser is phantomjs, driven by poltergeist. But I don't need to intercept requests from the browser, only server-side requests. If I needed to intercept from the browser I would probably use a full http proxy server, like puffing-billy.)
I'm assuming you mean Rails 5.1 since Rails 5 doesn't have system tests.
The copy of the application Capybara runs for testing is run in a separate thread, not a separate process. This means they do have access to the same memory, and loaded classes
There is nothing special required for configuring WebMock or VCR beyond what their READMEs already provide
The setup of Capybara and how Rails handles it is irrelevant to the configuration of WebMock or VCR. Additionally, even when using Rails 5.1 system tests all of the normal Capybara configuration options are still usable.
That all being said, there are a couple of things to be aware of here. Firstly, WebMock/VCR can only deal with requests made by your app (not from the browser which you stated you don't need) and it's generally better to use faked services (if possible) rather than WebMock/VCR when doing end to end system tests since there is less interference with the code under test.
If this doesn't answer your issues, post a question with a specific issue you're having, the code that's causing your issue, and the error you're getting.

Using PhantomJS in Ruby on Rails application

I would like to use PhantomJS as part of my main application lifecycle to take screenshots of a remote URL submitted by the user.
I'm familiar with using Poltergeist in conjunction with Capybara/Rspec. But how would I go about initializing the page object manually?
To initialize a capybara session in your app you can just do something like
session = Capybara::Session.new(:poltergeist)
( as documented here) and then rather than using page just call Capybara methods on session. One thing to note is that if you're going to test the app with Capybara too you will probably want to register a separate driver for the app and testing - https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara#configuring-and-adding-drivers . Also since Capybaras config is not thread-safe changing any of Capybaras setting would potentially affect both the test session and the in app session.
A far better solution may be to setup a separate Node.js service which runs phantom.js - in fact there are quite a few projects that provide a ready made screen capture webserver / console command.
Capybara is a testing tool and invoking a javascript runtime via ruby adds tons of overhead as well as not being thread-safe. The fact that it is not designed to be run in production is also a pretty big concern.
Instead you would simply call your screenshot service via HTTP or by running a shell command from Ruby.
I really like phantomjs in Rails app.
My suggest are using:
watir (https://github.com/watir/watir)
phantomjs (http://phantomjs.org/download.html)
You can take a screen shot very easy by using follow this: http://watir.github.io/docs/screenshots/
And if you want to use Page, i thinks you should see PageObject in here: https://github.com/watir/watir/wiki/Page-Objects

How to run rails request specs on a cloud deployment?

I am new to rails testing. Two days of running down leads with Google has turned up no solutions for what ought to be a frequent need.
If I write request (integration) specs to use a Selenium or other browser-based driver, is it possible to redirect the test's i/o to a staging deployment on a cloud server (in my case Heroku)?
If so, how? If not, what prevents this from working?
So far I have been using rspec/capybara, but would switch to anything of similar power if necessary.
You can use Capybara with Selenium driver, and set Capybara.app_host to specify the IP of you staging app server. While doing so you can turn off Capybara local rack with Capybara.run_server = false
Remote testing will allow you only to perform human kind of action and test the returned generated HTML/JS/Json etc .. but no access to controller, view, or any other app internal objects.
On thing you could do (I never tried, but I don't see why it wouldn't work) is to set-up your database.yml test configuration to remotely access you staging database, allowing you to control the database during your tests. It's not really secure so you may want to do that over a SSH tunnel , or a similar solution.

Mantain session between tests using Geb

I'm testing my application using Geb, and I want to mantain session between tests so I can avoid to log in in every tests (this is annoying when watching the tests in the browser).
Is there a way to mantain the session?
By default Geb test integrations clear all the cookies after every test which means that you loose your web sessions. You can easily change that behaviour by using the following configuration option in your GebConfig.groovy:
autoClearCookies = false
You can read more about using configuration here.
So yes, it is possible to maintain session between tests.
If you are using Spock, one option that you can do is to structure your "features" (test methods) in a linear fashion and use the #Stepwise annotation on the class. This will ensure that the cookies and browser object are not reset/replaced between features/test-methods
Yup, it isnt possible now. My specs start by logging in and finish by logging out.

Making remote web requests in rspec

I have a php app that is going through a migration to rails. We are currently sharing the session from php to rails using memcached. The problem that has arisen is now testing has become difficult. I can't make remote requests using capybara to write functional that really test the full application.
The only solution I have come up with is mocking out the memcached communication, which isn't what I really want in integration testing.
Does anyone have any better options for this? I've tried other capybara drivers, such as mechanize, but I can't get external pages to load.
Have you tired Culerity driver?: Capybara::Session documentation
# NB! untested!
require 'capybara/session'
session = Capybara::Session.new(:culerity)
session.visit('http://www.google.com')
session.fill_in('q', :with => 'Capybara')
session.click_button('Search')
session.should have_content('Capybara')

Resources