We’re using Devise’s token_authenticatable to improve our Cucumber test suite performance.

Here’s an example feature

  Scenario: I would like to edit a user account
    Given I am logged in as an admin user
    ...

And here’s the token_authenticatable step

  Given /^(?:I am logged in|the user is logged in|the user logs in|I log in)(?: as an? (w+) user)?$/ do |role|
    if ENV['use_token']
      visit admin_dashboard_path(:token => @user.authentication_token)
    else
      Given("the user logs in with email: "#{@user.email}", password: "#{@password}"")
      ...
    end

We’ll then run cucumber using a “faster” profile

$ cucumber -p faster

And finally, here’s our cucumber.yml

faster: <%= std_opts %> features FASTER=true

Our cucumber tests run significantly faster after switching to the token_authenticatable approach.