Login Failure when Testing with Capybara, Rspec and Selenium in Rails 3.1

You should set use_transactional_fixtures = false for your seleniumtests.This can be done in the spec_helper.rb with

config.use_transactional_fixtures = false 

for all your tests.

Or do this for a single testcase:

describe 'testcase' , :type => :request do  self.use_transactional_fixtures = false  it 'your test', :js => :true do    testing...  endend

This happens because selenium-tests access the database in a different way. With transactional fixtures enabled, selenium will work on an empty database -> your user does not exist and you cannot login.

For normal tests you should use transactional fixtures because your tests run much faster.

As per Avdi Grimm's post (features a detailed explanation):

Gemfile:

group :test do  gem 'database_cleaner'end

spec_helper.rb:

config.use_transactional_fixtures = false 

spec/support/database_cleaner.rb:

RSpec.configure do |config|  config.before(:suite) do    DatabaseCleaner.clean_with(:truncation)  end  config.before(:each) do    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :transaction  end  config.before(:each, :js => true) do    DatabaseCleaner.strategy = :truncation  end  config.before(:each) do    DatabaseCleaner.start  end  config.after(:each) do    DatabaseCleaner.clean  endend

I had transactional fixtures disabled but adding the :js => true block to database_cleaner.rb did it for me.