How to make automation more stable

Timeout, page is not completely loaded yet .. This is a really big issue in automation test. Therefore, we will need some techniques to help driver to deal with it. So we will be able to increase the tests stability.

Use headless driver - poltergeist

1. Add poltergeist to gemfile

2. Do brew install phantomjs in terminal (assume that using mac ox)

3. Add the following to spec_helper (resolve Poltergeist detected another element with CSS selector)

   require 'capybara/poltergeist'
   
   Capybara.register_driver :poltergeist do |app|
     options = { :js_errors => false, :timeout => 30, :window_size => [1920, 1080] }
     Capybara::Poltergeist::Driver.new(app, options)
   end
   
   Capybara.configure do |config|
     config.run_server = false
     config.default_driver = :poltergeist
     config.javascript_driver = :poltergeist
   end

Selectors

1. Capybara is using CSS by default
2. Use xpath find(:xpath, ‘//ul/li’).text
3. In XPath the expression, // means “anywhere in the document” not “anywhere in the current context”

Wait

• Implicit Wait

  driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
  driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 10 # seconds
  driver.get "http://somedomain/url_that_delays_loading"
  element = driver.find_element(:id => "some-dynamic-element")
  
  or for capybara
  config.default_wait_time = 30

• JS document state document.readyState == "complete"

• Explicit Wait plus ExpectedConditions

  wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new(:timeout => 3)
  wait.until { driver.find_element(:id => "cheese").displayed? }

Capybara visit

Occasionally I got timeout from Capybara.visit method. Someone suggested to use gem ‘thin’ or bundle update

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12922029/usr-lib-ruby-1-9-1-net-protocol-rb146in-rescue-in-rbuf-fill-timeouterror

capybara visit timeout

http://shashikantjagtap.net/cucumber-capybara-poltergeist-rockstar-bdd-combo/

When visit timeout, retry in the method, catch the error. Or, detect if the page has header, retry if not

When it’s complaining element can’t find but it’s there when do it manually, consider it hasn’t visited the URL properly.