Rails, Cucumber, Capybara: session is not persisted

Question

I'm trying to write a test for a feature that relies on some session stored data and my scenario looks like this:

Scenario: Create offer
  Given I am on the start offer page
  When I select "Foo" from "bar"
  And I press "Go on"
  Then I should see "You are going to offer foo"

By using the debugger I found out, that the information is stored in the session correctly, but on every new request I get a fresh session.

Should'nt there be a working session for at least every scenario? Any ideas why this isn't the case?

Thanks in advance, Joe

Versions: Running on rails 2.3.10, cucumber 0.10.0, cucumber-rails 0.3.2, capybara 0.4.1.2

Answer 1

We had the problem with loosing the session due to capybara switching the host name in mid-test. The scenario was something like the following:

# Good
When I visit some page
# will call 'http://capybarawhatever/some_page
And I click the the button
# will call 'http://capybarawhatever/some_new_page'
Then I still have the session

# Failing
When I visit some page
# will call 'http://capybarawhatever/some_page'
And I do something that redirects me to "http://newhost.org/new_page"
And I visit some page
# No this may go to 'http://newhost.org/some_page
Then I have lost my session

This may be worth investigating. You can get the current_url in your session, and you may set a new host for capybara using host! 'newhost.org'

Answer 2

Some of the drivers don't have a clear way of setting cookies. This is a hacky workaround until they are sorted out:

  def set_cookie(name, value, domain)
    driver = Capybara.current_session.driver rescue nil

    return unless driver

    case driver
    when Capybara::Driver::RackTest
      driver.set_cookie "#{name}=#{value}"
    when Capybara::Driver::Selenium
      visit '/' # must visit the domain before we can set the cookie

      br = driver.browser.send(:bridge)

      br.addCookie({
        'name'    => name,
        'domain'  => domain,
        'value'   => value,
        'path'    => '/',
        'expires' => (Time.now + 100.years).to_i
      })
    else
      raise "Unsupported driver #{driver}"
    end
  end