New Tabs and Cucumber

While working on an internal app at GitHub I had to write a cucumber scenario that ran expectations against a new tab that was opened. Here is how I did it.

The Code

Searching around the internet, I finally found a tip on StackOverflow that got me moving in the right direction. In this context tabs are referred to as windows.

page.driver.browser.switch_to.window(page.driver.browser.window_handles.last)

This code grabs the browser object and calls switch_to window on it and passes in the last opened window.

Now all we need to do is wrap this in a step so we can use it in our scenarios.

When /^I access the new tab$/ do
  page.driver.browser.switch_to.window(page.driver.browser.window_handles.last)
end

The Caveat

This will only work if you are using selenium-webdriver. It will not work with capybara-webkit unfortunately. So I switched to selenium, but I told it to use chrome instead of the default firefox and it still works great!

Capybara.javascript_driver = :selenium
Capybara.register_driver :selenium do |app|
  Capybara::Selenium::Driver.new(app, :browser => :chrome)
end

The Finale

Now its time to see the step in action. Notice I had to tag the feature with @javascript so that it uses the selenium webdriver.

@javascript
Feature: Open a discussion

  Scenario: staff opens a discussion with the mouse
    Given the following users exist:
      | username  | email                |
      | test-user | integration@test.com |
    And I am on the triage page
    When I follow "Can't get git running on my mac"
    And I access the new tab
    Then I should be on the discussion page for "5786909"
    And I should see "Can't get git running on my mac"

The link that I follow opens the new page in a new tab, I select the new tab, then run my expectations against it.