What is foot_traffic?

Foot Traffic is a Ruby tool that automates a real web browser to simulate people using your web application. Instead of manually clicking through your site to check if it works, you write a short script that opens Chrome, navigates to pages, clicks buttons, and types text just like a real user would. It's handy for moderate load testing or as a visual aid during development. Under the hood, it relies on another project called Ferrum, which talks directly to Chrome through its built-in debugging protocol. This means you don't need Selenium or any extra driver software installed, just Chrome. You open a session, and within that session you can open multiple browser tabs that run in parallel, each performing its own sequence of actions. You can also run multiple browser windows at once if you want to simulate heavier traffic. The main audience is developers or teams who want to watch their app handle multiple users at once. A concrete use case from the README: making sure your app's real-time features (like live updates) work properly for several users, and seeing the interaction play out visually before your eyes. You can commit these scripts to your project and run them whenever you need to check that things still work. The project offers useful tuning options. You can add delays between actions to better mimic human pacing, run in "headless" mode (no visible browser window), or set up guardrails that catch errors if your system runs out of memory from opening too many tabs. You can also manage cookies per tab, which lets you simulate scenarios like multiple logged-in users hitting protected pages. Note that the project is no longer maintained, so while the code is available and functional, it won't receive updates or fixes.