Capybara? Webrat?? What am I using??

Hey everybody

First of all: thank you for this very useful book. I’m really enjoying what I learn through it.

But I’m facing some problems because of the fact that the book is already some years old, I guess. I have installed rvm and use Ruby 1.9.3, and I didn’t really get some Rails code examples to work properly, so I tried it with a 1.8.7 installation, but there I had some other problems which I couldn’t solve.

So I re-did the code example myself (it’s the simulated_browser example) on Ruby 1.9.3, and it’s working quite nice but I had some other strange behavior now. In fact, I had an error message that the contain() was not found. After some searching on Google (and having seen the term capybara before somewhere in my error messages), somebody pointed out that when using capybara, contain() would not exist, but have_content(). So I tried it with have_content(), and it worked!

I’m a bit confused now – what exactly am I using? Capybara or Webrat?? I thought I use Webrat, and Capybara is never mentioned in the RSpec book. So why/where did Capybara sneak in?? Was Webrat maybe replaced in the never Rails version I’m using?

Some information about my Rails app…

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.3p0 (2011-10-30 revision 33570) [x86_64-darwin11.4.0]

$ gem list

• LOCAL GEMS *

abstract (1.0.0)
actionmailer (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
actionpack (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
activemodel (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
activerecord (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
activeresource (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
activesupport (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
addressable (2.2.8)
ancestry (1.2.5)
archive-tar-minitar (0.5.2)
arel (3.0.2, 1.0.1)
bcrypt-ruby (3.0.1)
bson (1.5.2)
bson_ext (1.5.2)
builder (3.0.0, 2.1.2)
bundler (1.1.4, 1.0.0)
capistrano (2.12.0)
capybara (1.1.2)
carrierwave (0.6.2)
carrierwave-mongoid (0.2.0)
childprocess (0.3.2)
chronic (0.6.7)
chunky_png (1.2.5)
cleditor_rails (0.0.3)
coffee-rails (3.2.2)
coffee-script (2.2.0)
coffee-script-source (1.3.3, 1.2.0)
columnize (0.3.6)
compass (0.12.rc.1)
compass-rails (1.0.0.rc.3)
cucumber (1.2.1)
cucumber-rails (1.3.0, 0.3.2)
daemons (1.1.8)
database_cleaner (0.8.0)
delayed_job (3.0.3)
delayed_job_active_record (0.3.2)
devise (2.0.4)
diff-lcs (1.1.3)
enum_column3 (0.1.4)
erubis (2.7.0, 2.6.6)
execjs (1.4.0, 1.3.0)
ffi (1.0.11)
formtastic (2.1.1)
fssm (0.2.8.1)
gherkin (2.11.0)
god (0.12.1)
haml (3.1.4)
haml-rails (0.3.4)
highline (1.6.12)
hike (1.2.1)
hpricot (0.8.6)
i18n (0.6.0, 0.4.2)
journey (1.0.3)
jquery-rails (2.0.2, 2.0.1)
jquery-ui-rails (0.2.2)
json (1.7.3, 1.6.5)
kaminari (0.13.0)
launchy (2.1.0)
libwebsocket (0.1.3)
mail (2.4.4, 2.4.1, 2.2.19)
mime-types (1.18, 1.17.2)
mongo (1.5.2)
mongoid (2.4.0)
multi_json (1.3.6, 1.3.5)
mysql2 (0.3.11)
net-scp (1.0.4)
net-sftp (2.0.5)
net-ssh (2.5.2)
net-ssh-gateway (1.1.0)
nokogiri (1.5.4)
orm_adapter (0.0.6)
polyglot (0.3.3)
rack (1.4.1, 1.2.5)
rack-cache (1.2, 1.1)
rack-mount (0.6.14)
rack-ssl (1.3.2)
rack-test (0.6.1, 0.5.7)
rails (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
rails3-jquery-autocomplete (1.0.7)
railties (3.2.5, 3.2.1, 3.0.0)
rake (0.9.2.2)
rdoc (3.12)
rspec (2.10.0, 2.0.0)
rspec-core (2.10.1, 2.0.0)
rspec-expectations (2.10.0, 2.0.0)
rspec-mocks (2.10.1, 2.0.0)
rspec-rails (2.10.1, 2.0.0)
ruby-debug-base19 (0.11.25)
ruby-debug-base19x (0.11.30.pre10)
ruby-debug19 (0.11.6)
ruby_core_source (0.1.5)
ruby_parser (2.3.1)
rubygems-bundler (1.0.2)
rubyzip (0.9.8, 0.9.7)
rvm (1.11.3.3)
rvm-capistrano (1.2.2)
sass (3.1.19, 3.1.15)
sass-rails (3.2.5, 3.2.4)
selenium-webdriver (2.22.2)
sexp_processor (3.0.10)
sprockets (2.1.3, 2.1.2)
sqlite3 (1.3.6)
sqlite3-ruby (1.3.3)
syntax (1.0.0)
thor (0.15.2, 0.14.6)
tilt (1.3.3)
treetop (1.4.10)
tzinfo (0.3.33)
uglifier (1.2.4, 1.2.3)
vpim (0.695)
warden (1.1.1)
webrat (0.7.3, 0.7.2)
whenever (0.7.3)
xpath (0.1.4)

Thanks a lot for help about this.
Josh

Josh, I have gone through the same steps you have and felt the same confusion. Here are some points that may help clarify things for you a little bit:
1. Capybara is an improved implementation of Webrat that is more up-to-date. It gained popularity after publishing the RSpec book and eventually became more popular than Webrat to the point that Aslak Hellesoy decided to drop cucumber-rails support for Webrat as of v0.5.0 and adopted Capybara instead. To continue using Webrat with the book examples, use the cucumber-rails-0.3.2 as stated in the Preface of the RSpec book.
2. To save you time and more confusion with many other issues down the road, stick to all the gem versions stated in the Preface. I’m using ruby 1.9.2, the latest version of rubygems, and the rest are the same versions stated in the Preface. To install a specific version of a gem, for example rspec-2.0.0, use > gem install—version ”=2.0.0” rspec

I am running into the same thing. To step back the versions of gems rather than what’s currently being shipped with cucumber-rails might accomplish an easier step-by-step adventure approach, but I can’t help but feel that’s throwing out the spirit of the chapter.

Since I’m using the book as a reference for a new software project, I’ll stumble through the differences and apply the ideas. It’s still a great book, even with the lagging references.