cucumber, capybara & selenium works randomly

Question

Setup with cucumber, capybara and selenium but some scenarios works only randomly.
Running
ruby 1.8.6 on rvm
rails 2.3.8
selenium pops open firefox 3.6

I have tried to add this with no luck:

with_scope(selector) do
  click_button(button)
  selenium.wait_for_page_to_load
end

The error output is sometimes:

>  Given I am logged in and have created newsletter and subscribers                           # features/step_definitions/newsletter_send_steps.rb:108
      end of file reached (EOFError)
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:133:in `sysread'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:133:in `rbuf_fill'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:62:in `timeout'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:93:in `timeout'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:132:in `rbuf_fill'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:116:in `readuntil'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:126:in `readline'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2020:in `read_status_line'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2009:in `read_new'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1050:in `request_without_fakeweb'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1037:in `request_without_fakeweb'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:543:in `start'
      /Users/christianhager/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.6-p399/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1035:in `request_without_fakeweb'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:24:in `__instance_exec2'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:9:in `with_scope'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:9:in `with_scope'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:23:in `/^(?:|I )press "([^\"]*)"(?: within "([^\"]*)")?$/'
      features/enhanced/newsletter_send1.feature:7:in `Given I am logged in and have created newsletter and subscribers'

And othertimes:

> no button with value or id or text 'create_user_button' found (Capybara::ElementNotFound)
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:24:in `__instance_exec2'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:9:in `with_scope'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:9:in `with_scope'
      ./features/step_definitions/web_steps.rb:23:in `/^(?:|I )press "([^\"]*)"(?: within "([^\"]*)")?$/'
      features/enhanced/newsletter_send1.feature:7:in `Given I am logged in and have created newsletter and subscribers'

And sometimes it just works....

This is how my env.rb looks like

ENV["RAILS_ENV"] ||= "cucumber"
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/../../config/environment')

require 'cucumber/formatter/unicode' # Remove this line if you don't want Cucumber Unicode support
require 'cucumber/rails/world'
require 'cucumber/rails/active_record'
require 'cucumber/web/tableish'
require 'capybara/rails'
require 'capybara/cucumber'
require 'capybara/session'
require 'cucumber/rails/capybara_javascript_emulation' 
require "selenium-webdriver"

Capybara.default_driver = :selenium
Capybara.default_wait_time = 5 
Capybara.ignore_hidden_elements = false
Capybara.default_selector = :css

ActionController::Base.allow_rescue = false

require 'database_cleaner'
DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation

Before do
 Capybara.reset_sessions!
 DatabaseCleaner.clean
end

Cucumber::Rails::World.use_transactional_fixtures = false

Cucumber-steps:
Given I am on the signup page
And I fill in "user_login" with "[e-mail]" within "body"
And I fill in "user_password" with "secret" within "body"
And I fill in "user_password_confirmation" with "secret" within "body"
And I check "terms_of_use" within "body"
And I press "create_user_button" within "body"

Any insight would be great :)

Answer 1

It's HTTP mocking, if you remove fakeweb or webmock from your environment (entirely), it should all work again.

The last comment by Adam Greene DOES WORK regarding setting up Curb with: Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox, :http_client => Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Http::Curb

Read the thread on the Capybara group.

The problem we're having is playing back recorded http traffic using fakeweb or webmock since web driver is now Curb. So if you're goal was to fake out traffic over Capybara, you'll get browser testing to work again but you won't be able to play the traffic back over the same browser. (We're using VCR to record.)

Adding Curb support is listed as a "ticket" on the Fakeweb's Github Issues site.

Answer 2

I bumped into this in a Rails 2.3 app with cucumber/capybara/akephalos/fakeweb recently, but ultimately got to resolve this by completely killing all gems in my bundle (they where kept in .bundle/ and reinstalling.