I would like to build some Ruby tests to test my non-Ruby website. I love the Ruby testing tools (webrat, capybara, etc.) but they seem to be targeted to testing local sites.

How can I use these great tools to test external websites? Is there a way to override their settings so that they don’t hit http://localhost for everything? Or do they work deeper and what I’m asking is impossible?

MichaelT, I guess a better way to ask my question is: How do I continuously test a non-Ruby website (say, a .Net one) with Ruby tools? I want to crawl my website every 5 minutes, doing things like logging in, making sure the home page loads, adding things to my shopping cart, and checking out. If any of these steps fails or takes too long then I want the system to notify me in some way so that I can fix it.

UPDATE:

JustinC has the right idea, apparently this is a duplicate question and I wasn’t able to find the correct question to ask. I think either of the solutions in your response will work and I’ll play with them both. Thanx!

NOTE: I know there are several SaaS providers on the web that do transaction testing but in a quick survey I was unable to find one that A) worked with non-Windows systems, and B) was able to be scripted without some sort of “recording” system (which didn’t work on my system).