How can I iterate through an array of links and check information on the page to which each refers? - ruby

Question

I have a page that lists job openings at my company. I want to use Capybara tests to click on each of the links and determine if the target page contains certain content.
I have the step below. The next step in the process checks for the content on the new page.
When("I click on each job title") do
page.all('.job-box').each do |item|
within(item) do
find('a').click
end
end
end
Once the first link is clicked the browser goes to a different page. At that point, I would like to check the content on that page, then return to the previous step to check the next link. What actually happens is that the code clicks the first link, and then attempts to click the second link. Since the first link sent it to another page, the second link is no longer present, so it returns a stale element error.
Obviously, I need a way to deal with multiple pages before continuing with the next step in the iteration, but I haven't found any documentation that addresses that problem.

Answer 1

You probably want to use page.go_back (or page.driver.go_back depending on the driver you're using). Something like this:
When("I click on each job title") do
page.all('.job-box').each do |item|
within(item) do
find('a').click
# do stuff
end
# roll back (granting you went but one click away)
page.go_back
end
end

Answer 2

As you've recognized the issue here is that the elements are stale when you return to the previous page. Depending on what limitations you're willing to accept there are multiple ways to deal with this. The bigger issue you have is that you're doing this in Cucumber which really doesn't have support for scoping/looping in its test structure. If you're willing for this to only work on a specific browser/platform you can use the respective key modifiers on click to have the browser open a new tab for each job entry and then your next step could run through all the open tabs checking those
When("I click on each job title") do
page.all('.job-box').each do |item|
item.find('a').click(:alt, :cmd) # alt,cmd click in Chrome MacOS opens in new tab
end
end
But really you're going to be better off doing something like
When("I click on each job title and verify info") do
page.all('.job-box').each do |item|
window = page.window_opened_by do
item.find('a').click(:alt, :cmd)
end
page.within_window(window) do
# verify whatever needs to be verified
end
window.close
end
end

Answer 3

Thomas Walpole's answer got me close enough to figure it out. Here is what ended up working:
When("I click on each job title and verify info") do
page.all('.job-box').each do |item|
new_window = window_opened_by do
url = item.find('a')[:href]
within_window open_new_window do
visit url
end
end
page.within_window(new_window) do
# do stuff
end
end
end
It doesn't close each new tab after it checks it, which could be a problem if you are working with a lot of links. I only have about 15, so it wasn't an issue for me. They all closed when the browser closed after the test finished.