Debug your Web Test with ruby-debug

Ruby-debug has been giving me alot of help in debugging my cucumber web test. I use ruby-debug to pause my web testing so that I can check the variables values and to see what causes the test to fail on the websites.

To install ruby-debug gems, please visit this page

I created a simple steps definitions to invoke ruby-debug:

When /^I go into debug mode$/ do
  require 'ruby-debug'
  debugger
  1
end

Then, I can simply use the steps definition in any cucumber scenario.

Scenario: A simple google search scenario
  Given I am on the main google search
  And I search for "site:qastuffs.blogspot.com"
  And I click on the search button
  And I go into debug mode
  And I click on the first result
  Then I should land on the qastuffs blog

The above cucumber scenario will run the browser to google.com to do a search on site:qastuffs.blogspot.com. Then it will hit the debug mode and it will pause. You will see the following text "(rdb:1) on your console where you can print your test variables.

To see all of commands that you can run in ruby-debug, simply type in "h" and press enter

(rdb:1) h
ruby-debug help v0.10.3
Type 'help ' for help on a specific command

Available commands:
backtrace  delete   enable  help    next  quit     show       up
break      disable  eval    info    p     reload   step       var
catch      display  exit    irb     pp    restart  thread     where
condition  down     finish  list    ps    save     trace
continue   edit     frame   method  putl  set      undisplay