Open new private window with Capybara and selenium-webdriver

Question

How can I open 2 windows simultaneously but one in private mode?

The capybara's method ( link )

open_new_window

opens a new window but it doesn't accept any parameters.

Also tried:

    page.execute_script 'window.open(link, "mywindow", "private=yes");'

But still the new window is not in private mode.

I am using:

• capybara (2.11.0)
• selenium-webdriver (2.53.4)
• Firefox v46

Any ideas?

Answer 1

To have a private mode window and a non private mode window you need to have two sessions, and two driver registrations. In the current releases of Capybara, selenium-webdriver, and Firefox with manual session management this could be done as

Capybara.register_driver :selenium_firefox_private do |app|
  firefox_options = ::Selenium::WebDriver::Firefox::Options.new
  firefox_options.args << "-private"
  Capybara::Selenium::Driver.new(app, browser: :chrome, options: firefox_options)
end

and then in your test when you need a private window you would create a new sessions for the private window

# Assuming you already have a session going and are interacting with the page
# with `Capybara.javascript_driver = :selenium` or equivalent set
page.find(...) # everything called on page is happening in the original non-private session

private_session = Capybara::Session.new(:selenium_firefox_private, Capybara.app)
private_session.visit(...) # anything called on private_session will happen in the private firefox instance

Another option would be to use Capybaara.using_driver

Capybara.using_driver(:selenium_chrome_private) do
  # everything in this block would happen in a private browsing session that is auto created by Capybara (if it hadn't already been created)
  page.visit('/')
end

The same is true for the obsolete versions you're using but the Selenium configuration in the driver registration would probably be different.