Firefox Proxy configuration using Selenium Webdriver and Capybara

Quite often we have to run the automation test within the proxy setting. The default browser profile setup that Capybara use is the anonymous profile which does not use proxy setting by default. This will cause problem as the browser will not be able to access the webpage.

To see all of the available configuration in Firefox simply type "about:config" on the firefox address bar. You will then see the following screen:

One solution is to set the browser profile to use a proxy setting. The code can be placed inside the env.rb files to override the anonymous browser profile that Capybara uses.

# Need to override the driver to setup our proxy profile
class Capybara::Driver::Selenium
def self.driver
unless @driver
profile = Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Profile.new
profile["network.proxy.type"] = 1
profile["network.proxy.http"] = "proxy setting"
profile["network.proxy.http_port"] = 8080
@driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for(:firefox, :profile => profile)

at_exit do
@driver.quit
end
end
@driver
end
end

If you need to use the Automatic proxy configuration (pac file) URL then you would need to add the following line:

profile["network.proxy.autoconfig_url"]="proxy.pac"

And change the network.proxy.type into 2

profile["network.proxy.type"] = 1

If you need Capybara to use a different browser other than Firefox you can change the webdriver browser's profile. To change the default profile for other browsers you just need to change the @driver to use the browser that you want.

@driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :ie
or
@driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

Please note that webdriver currently only supports Firefox, IE and chrome.