Selenium with Capybara

Your guide to running Selenium Webdriver tests with Capybara on BrowserStack.

Note: Refer our sample repo on Github: Capybara repo on Github

Introduction

BrowserStack gives you instant access to our Selenium Grid of 2000+ real devices and desktop browsers. Running your Selenium tests with Capybara on BrowserStack is simple. This guide will help you:

1. Run your first test
2. Mark tests as pass / fail
3. Debug your app

Prerequisites

Before you can start running your Selenium tests with Capybara, ensure you have the Capybara libraries installed:

# Install using gem

gem install capybara

Run your first test

To understand how to integrate with BrowserStack, we will look at two things:

1. A sample test case written in Capybara with Ruby
2. Integration of this sample test case with BrowserStack

Sample test case

The sample Capybara test case below searches for the string “BrowserStack” on Google, and checks if the title of the resulting page is “BrowserStack - Google Search”

# Google Feature
Feature: Google Search Functionality

Background:
  Given I am on https://www.google.com/ncr

Scenario: Can find search results
  When I fill in "q" found by "name" with "BrowserStack"
  And I submit
  Then I should see title "BrowserStack - Google Search"

# Google Steps
Given /^I am on (.*)$/ do |url|
  visit url
end

When /^I fill in "([^\"]*)" found by "([^\"]*)" with "([^\"]*)"$/ do |value, type, keys|
  fill_in(value, :with => keys)
end

When /^I submit$/ do
  find_field('q').native.send_key(:enter)
end

Then /^I should see title "([^\"]*)"$/ do |title|
  expect(page).to have_title title
end

Once we have defined the test case, we are ready to integrate this Capybara test case into BrowserStack.

Integrating with BrowserStack

Note: Running your Selenium tests on BrowserStack requires a BrowserStack Username and Access Key.

To obtain your username and access keys, sign up for a Free Trial or purchase a plan.

We can now integrate our Capybara test case into BrowserStack. Integration of Capybara with BrowserStack is made possible by use of following module:

require 'yaml'
require 'selenium/webdriver'
require 'capybara/cucumber'
require 'browserstack/local'

# monkey patch to avoid reset sessions
class Capybara::Selenium::Driver < Capybara::Driver::Base
  def reset!
    if @browser
      @browser.navigate.to('about:blank')
    end
  end
end

TASK_ID = (ENV['TASK_ID'] || 0).to_i
CONFIG_NAME = ENV['CONFIG_NAME'] || 'single'

CONFIG = YAML.load(File.read(File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "../../config/#{CONFIG_NAME}.config.yml")))
CONFIG['user'] = ENV['BROWSERSTACK_USERNAME'] || CONFIG['user']
CONFIG['key'] = ENV['BROWSERSTACK_ACCESS_KEY'] || CONFIG['key']


Capybara.register_driver :browserstack do |app|
  @caps = CONFIG['common_caps'].merge(CONFIG['browser_caps'][TASK_ID])

  # Code to start browserstack local before start of test
  if @caps['browserstack.local'] && @caps['browserstack.local'].to_s == 'true';
    @bs_local = BrowserStack::Local.new
    bs_local_args = {"key" => "#{CONFIG['key']}"}
    @bs_local.start(bs_local_args)
  end

  Capybara::Selenium::Driver.new(app,
    :browser => :remote,
    :url => "https://#{CONFIG['user']}:#{CONFIG['key']}@#{CONFIG['server']}/wd/hub",
    :desired_capabilities => @caps
  )
end

Capybara.default_driver = :browserstack

# Code to stop browserstack local after end of test
at_exit do
  @bs_local.stop unless @bs_local.nil?
end

The module reads from config file where you need to put the BrowserStack Hub URL and credentials.

server: "hub-cloud.browserstack.com"
user: "YOUR_USERNAME"
key: "YOUR_ACCESS_KEY"

common_caps:
  "browserstack.debug": true
  "name": "Bstack-[Capybara] Sample Test"

browser_caps:
  -
    "browser": "chrome"

We are now ready to run the test on BrowserStack, using the following command:

# Run using rake
bundle exec rake single

Mark tests as pass / fail

BrowserStack provides a comprehensive REST API to access and update information about your tests. Shown below is a sample code snippet which allows you to mark your tests as ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ based on the assertions in your Capybara test cases.

require 'rest_client'
RestClient.put 'https://YOUR_USERNAME:YOUR_ACCESS_KEY@api.browserstack.com/automate/sessions/<session-id>.json', {"status"=>"completed", "reason"=>""}, {:content_type => :json}

The two potential values for status can either be completed or error. Optionally, a reason can also be passed. A full reference of our REST API can be found here.

Debug your app

BrowserStack provides a range of debugging tools to help you quickly identify and fix bugs you discover through your automated tests.

• Text Logs

Text Logs are a comprehensive record of your test. They are used to identify all the steps executed in the test and troubleshoot errors for the failed step. Text Logs are accessible from the Automate dashboard or via our REST API.

• Visual Logs

Visual Logs automatically capture the screenshots generated at every Selenium command run through your PHP script. Visual logs help with debugging the exact step and the page where failure occurred. They also help identify any layout or design related issues with your web pages on different browsers.

Visual Logs are disabled by default. In order to enable Visual Logs you will need to set browserstack.debug capability to true:

caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.new
caps["browserstack.debug"] = "true"

• Video Recording

Every test run on the BrowserStack Selenium grid is recorded exactly as it is executed on our remote machine. This feature is particularly helpful whenever a browser test fails. You can access videos from Automate Dashboard for each session. You can also download the videos from the Dashboard or retrieve a link to download the video using our REST API.

Note: Video recording increases test execution time slightly. You can disable this feature by setting the browserstack.video capability to false.

caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.new
caps["browserstack.video"] = "false"

In addition to these logs BrowserStack also provides Raw logs, Network logs, Console logs, Selenium logs, Appium logs and Interactive session. Complete details to enable all the debugging options can be found here.