刷新浏览器后的Ruby全局变量

我对Ruby和使用Watir开发脚本进行验收测试非常陌生，我陷入了一种陈规，我甚至不确定是否有可能摆脱。

我有一个运行的小脚本，它基本上查看一个下拉列表，将所有下拉列表项存储到一个全局变量中，然后我遍历并运行一些其他函数。

当我尝试在运行每个下拉项的所有函数后刷新浏览器，然后尝试迭代到下一个下拉项并执行相同的函数，直到所有下拉项完成时，会出现问题。

$browser = Watir::Browser.new :chrome
$wait = Watir::Wait
def wait_while_loading(what)
    lightbox = $browser.div(:class , 'lightbox')
    begin
        # Capture load start
        start = Time.now
        $wait.until { lightbox.present? }
        $wait.until { !lightbox.present? }
        # Capture load end
        finish = Time.now
        load_time = (finish - start).to_s
    rescue => e
        print e.backtrace.join("'n")
        #log_error('Failed while loading ' + what + '.')
    end 
end
def cycle_all_views
    $views = []
    $current_view
    $view_dropdown = $browser.div(:id, 'views-dropdown') 
    $views = $browser.div(:class, 'dropdown-views').div(:class, 'dropdown-menu--footer').ul(:class, 'dropdown-menu').divs(:class, 'dropdown-menu-item')
    start_on_view = 10
    begin
        $views.drop(start_on_view).each_with_index do |view, i|     
            $view_dropdown.click
            $current_view = view.text
            index = i.to_s
            safe_name = sanitize($current_view)
            view.click
            wait_while_loading($current_view)
            $browser.refresh
            wait_while_loading('Refreshing Page...')
        end
    rescue => e
        #log_error('Failed to load view ' + $current_view)
    end
end

触发$browser.refresh后，在迭代到下一个view后单击$views_dropdown，当尝试做$current_view = view.text时，我看到一个错误，说明no implicit conversion of nil into String假设。在页面刷新后，我是否丢失了对变量的所有赋值?如果是这样，有办法留住他们吗?

如果有人能给我指出更好的调试Watir脚本的方法，我很想知道有什么方法能让我的工作更轻松。

堆栈跟踪返回如下:

C:/Ruby23/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/watir-webdriver-0.9.3/lib/watir-webdriver/ele
ments/element.rb:536:in `assert_element_found'
C:/Ruby23/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/watir-webdriver-0.9.3/lib/watir-webdriver/ele
ments/element.rb:524:in `ensure_not_stale'
C:/Ruby23/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/watir-webdriver-0.9.3/lib/watir-webdriver/ele
ments/element.rb:503:in `assert_exists'
C:/Ruby23/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0/gems/watir-webdriver-0.9.3/lib/watir-webdriver/ele
ments/element.rb:81:in `text'
main.rb:55:in `block in cycle_all_views'
main.rb:52:in `each'
main.rb:52:in `each_with_index'
main.rb:52:in `cycle_all_views'
main.rb:122:in `block in <main>'
main.rb:112:in `each'
main.rb:112:in `<main>'Failed to load view First View