Test Automation with Cucumber & Capybara

We will introduce today Capybara an higher level ATDD testing framework
which support for multiple backends, supports Selenium and works in multiple browsers.

The advantage of using Capybara over selenium is being on higher level than selenium , it can be used for other types of automation beside browser automation without changing the user facing simple and intuitive DSL.
Let’s take for example a simple scenario of typing strings to an input textbox:

Selenium-webdriver snippet

require 'selenium-webdriver' element = driver.find_element :name => "q" element.send_keys "Cucumber tests"

Capybara snippet

require 'capybara' fill_in "q", "Cucumber tests"

The difference is clear in terms of simplicity and user friendliness which sets apart capaybara from selenium webdriver.Below is complete example for the reference starting from setting up the folder structure.
I. Base Folder

Base Folder Structure

where:
features – folder to host all your feature files
step_definitions – folder to host all your step definition Ruby files
support – folder to host your configuration files (env.rb)
Gemfile – defines the top-level gems to be used in your project
II. Features
- describes the features that a user will be able to use in the program
Sample: simple_search.feature

Feature: As a user I should be able to perform simple google search Scenario: A simple google search scenario  Given I am on the main google search  When I fill in "q" with "Cucumber test"  And I click "gbqfb" button  And I click on the first result  Then I should see "Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text."

III. Step Definition
- describes the actions that user will do for each step.
Sample: search_step.rb

Given /^I am on the main google search$/ do  visit ('/') end When /^(?:|I )fill in "([^"]*)" with "([^"]*)"$/ do |field, value|  fill_in(field, :with => value) end Then /^I click "([^"]*)" button$/ do |button|  click_button(button) end Then /^I click on the first result$/ do  find(:xpath, "//html/body/div[3]/div[2]").click end Then /^I should see "([^"]*)"$/ do |text|  page.should have_content(text) end

IV. Support
- hosts all configuration files
Sample: env.rb

require 'capybara' require 'capybara/cucumber' Capybara.default_driver = :selenium Capybara.app_host = "http://www.google.com" Capybara.default_wait_time = 20

V. Gemfile
- a format for describing gem dependencies required to execute Ruby codes
Sample: Gemfile

source "http://rubygems.org" group(:test) do  gem 'cucumber'  gem 'capybara'  gem 'rspec' end

VI. Run
Using terminal go to your root project folder and type: cucumber or bundle exec cucumber
After the run, you should be able to see the results like this:
1 scenario (1 passed)
5 steps (5 passed)
0m8.231s