Exploring the power of Cucumber, Ruby, Capybara, and Selenium: Enhancing the 'visit' method to handle dynamic content delays

For weeks now, I've been dealing with an issue that seems to have no solution found online... like waiting for ajax, etc...

Check out the versions of gems:

  • capybara (2.10.1, 2.7.1)
  • selenium-webdriver (3.0.1, 3.0.0)
  • rspec (3.5.0)

running ruby 2.2.5 ruby 2.2.5p319 (2016-04-26 revision 54774) [x64-mingw32]

In the env.rb file

Capybara.register_driver :selenium do | app |
browser = (ENV['browser'] || 'firefox').to_sym
Capybara::Driver::Selenium.new(app, :browser => browser.to_sym, :resynchronize => true)
Capybara.default_max_wait_time = 5
end

This is from my dynamicpage.feature file:

Given I visit page X
Then placeholder text appears
And the placeholder text is replaced by the content provided by the json service 

Now, in the step.rb file:

When(/^I visit page X$/) do
visit('mysite.com/productx/')
end

When(/^placeholder text appears$/) do
  expect(page).to have_css(".text-replacer-pending")
end

Then(/^the placeholder text is replaced by the content provided by the json service$/) do
    expect(page).to have_css(".text-replacer-done")
end

The webpage that's causing me trouble isn't publicly accessible but on page load it contains:

1- <span class="text-replacer-pending">Placeholder Text</span>

After a call to an external service and data update, the span gets updated to:

2- <span class="text-replacer-done">Correct Data</span>

I'm facing an issue where Capybara + Selenium freezes the browser after visiting the page without letting the service update the content dynamically. I've tried various solutions like:

  1. Capybara.default_max_wait_time = 5
  2. Capybara::Driver::Selenium.new(app, :browser => browser.to_sym, :resynchronize => true)
  3. adding sleep 5 after the visit method
  4. waiting for ajax using different websites' solutions, etc...
  5. incorporating after hooks etc...

I am completely puzzled as to why the "visit" method can't wait or provide a simple fix for this commonly faced issue. While I know about Capybara methods that do and don't wait, the problem lies in:

  1. there's no transition from hidden to displayed content
  2. no user interaction involved, just updating content

Not sure if it's a Capybara, Selenium, or both issue. Any insight or solutions would be greatly appreciated, especially regarding which code goes where since I'm new to Ruby and Cucumber.

Mel

Answer №1

Include the wait_until method in your test suite by adding it to your spec_helpers.rb

def wait_until(timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_LIMIT)
  Timeout.timeout(timeout) do
    sleep(0.1) until check_value = yield
    check_value
  end
end

After implementing the method, use it like this:

# specify time frame in seconds
wait_until(20) { has_no_css?('.text-replacer-pending') }
expect(page).to have_css(".text-replacer-done")

Answer №2

Shoutout to @maxple and @nattf0dd Just wanted to give an update on our situation...

After approaching this issue from a different perspective, we have come to realize that the real culprit is not Cucumber/Capybara after all :-)

The root of our problem seems to be with the Firefox browser driver (specifically SSL related), as we encounter no issues when using the Chrome driver.

I sincerely value all the responses and advice given, and will definitely keep them in mind going forward. Thanks once again!

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