Selenium on Rails, Reloaded: Client-Side Tests in Ruby

Eric Kidd — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:06:00 -0500

Like most Ruby on Rails developers, I write lots of test cases for my models and controllers. This lets me add new features quickly, without worrying about breakage: My test cases act as a safety net, warning me whenever existing code fails.

Sadly, it’s much harder to test client-side behavior. Sure, you know your controllers work, but what actually happens if a user clicks the Submit button? We need a better way to test the system end-to-end, including the actual JavaScript and web browsers.

This article shows how to combine Selenium, Selenium on Rails, and a custom patch to write client-side test cases in Ruby:

test.setup # Load fixtures
test.open :controller => 'customer',
          :action => 'list'
test.assert_title 'Customers'
test.click 'myLink', :wait => true
test.assert_title 'Customer: *'

These test cases actually run in your browser, loading pages and clicking links just as a user would. As the above example shows, you have full access to the Rails environment, including URL routing and configuration data.

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Selenium on Rails, Reloaded: Client-Side Tests in Ruby