Selenium screenshots using rspec

Question

I am trying to capture screenshots on test failure using selenium-client and rspec. I run this command:

$ spec my_spec.rb \
--require 'rubygems,selenium/rspec/reporting/selenium_test_report_formatter' \
--format=Selenium::RSpec::SeleniumTestReportFormatter:./report.html

It creates the report correctly when everything passes, since no screenshots are required. However, when the test fails, I get this message, and the report has blank screenshots:

WARNING: Could not capture HTML snapshot: execution expired
WARNING: Could not capture page screenshot: execution expired
WARNING: Could not capture system screenshot: execution expired
Problem while capturing system stateexecution expired

What is causing this 'execution expired' error? Am I missing something important in my spec? Here is the code for my_spec.rb:

require 'rubygems'
gem "rspec", "=1.2.8"
gem "selenium-client"
require "selenium/client"
require "selenium/rspec/spec_helper"

describe "Databases" do
    attr_reader :selenium_driver
    alias :page :selenium_driver

  before(:all) do
      @selenium_driver = Selenium::Client::Driver.new \
          :host => "192.168.0.10",
          :port => 4444,
          :browser => "*firefox",
          :url => "http://192.168.0.11/",
          :timeout_in_seconds => 10
  end

  before(:each) do
    @selenium_driver.start_new_browser_session
  end

  # The system capture need to happen BEFORE closing the Selenium session
  append_after(:each) do
    @selenium_driver.close_current_browser_session
  end

  it "backed up" do
    page.open "/SQLDBDetails.aspx
    page.click "btnBackup", :wait_for => :page
    page.text?("Pending Backup").should be_true
  end
end

Answer 1

Why not take the screenshot in the after function, but before you close the browser?

Answer 2

I ran into that issue and was able to solve it by setting up the timeout for the driver. This can cause the Driver to end the Browser session before running into :after_each You are using 10 seconds, i am running fine with :timeout_in_seconds => 2000

Answer 3

In order to get screenshots on error working I had to mod things a bit.

I moved the following code out of spec_helper (which I found in C:\Ruby\lib\ruby\gems\selenium-client-1.2.18\lib\selenium\rspec\spec_helper.rb):

    if actual_failure?
         Selenium::RSpec::SeleniumTestReportFormatter.capture_system_state(selenium_driver, self)
    end

and placed it into the append_after(:each) do section of my test's setup/teardown (before the line @selenium_driver.close_current_browser_session).

Hope this helps!