How to use same browser window for automated test using selenium-webdriver (ruby)?

Question

I am automating test cases for a website using selenium-webdriver and cucumber in ruby. I need each feature to run in a particular order and using the same browser window. A

Answer 1

I had a similar problem in creating a spec_helper file. I did the following (simplified for locally-run firefox) for my purposes and it works very, very reliably. RSpec will use the same browser window for all it blocks in your _spec.rb file.

Rspec.configure do |config|
  config.before(:all) do
    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox
  end

  config.after(:all) do
    @driver.quit
  end
end

If you switch to :each instead of :all, you can use a separate browser instance for each assertion block... again, with :each RSpec will give a new browser instance for each it. Both are useful depending on the circumstance.