How can I run Selenium (used through Capybara) at a lower speed?

Question

By default Selenium runs as fast as possible through the scenarios I defined using Cucumber. I would like to set it to run at a lower speed, so I am able to capture a video of the process.

I figured out that an instance of Selenium::Client::Driver has a set_speed method. Which corresponds with the Java API.

How can I obtain an instance of the Selenium::Client::Driver class? I can get as far as page.driver, but that returns an instance of Capybara::Driver::Selenium.

Answer 1

Thanks to http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-capybara/msg/6079b122979ffad2 for a hint.

Just a note that this uses Ruby's sleep, so it's somewhat imprecise - but should do the job for you. Also, execute is called for everything so that's why it's sub-second waiting. The intermediate steps - wait until ready, check field, focus, enter text - each pause.

Create a "throttle.rb" in your features/support directory (if using Cucumber) and fill it with:

require 'selenium-webdriver'
module ::Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox
  class Bridge
    attr_accessor :speed

    def execute(*args)
      result = raw_execute(*args)['value']
      case speed
        when :slow
          sleep 0.3
        when :medium
          sleep 0.1
      end
      result
    end
  end
end

def set_speed(speed)
  begin
    page.driver.browser.send(:bridge).speed=speed
  rescue
  end
end

Then, in a step definition, call:

set_speed(:slow)

or:

set_speed(:medium)

To reset, call:

set_speed(:fast)