How do I re-use Capybara sessions between tests?

Question

I want to keep on using the same session and by that I mean Rails\' session between various Test::Unit integration tests that use Capybara. The Capybara::Sess

Answer 1

You can prevent the call to @browser.manage.delete_all_cookies that happens between tests by monkey patching the Capybara::Selenium::Driver#reset! method. It's not a clean way of doing it, but it should work...

Add the following code to your project so that it is executed after you require 'capybara':

class Capybara::Selenium::Driver < Capybara::Driver::Base
  def reset!
    # Use instance variable directly so we avoid starting the browser just to reset the session
    if @browser
      begin
        #@browser.manage.delete_all_cookies <= cookie deletion is commented out!
      rescue Selenium::WebDriver::Error::UnhandledError => e
        # delete_all_cookies fails when we've previously gone
        # to about:blank, so we rescue this error and do nothing
        # instead.
      end
      @browser.navigate.to('about:blank')
    end
  end
end

For interest's sake, the offending line can be seen in Capybara's codebase here: https://github.com/jnicklas/capybara/blob/master/lib/capybara/selenium/driver.rb#L71