Appium Introductions

UI Automation Test for iOS & Android

Sirius Dely

27 May 2015

UI Automation(?)

Automate user's interaction with the app's UI: tapping button, filling forms, waiting for specific outcome from the app.

Benefits:

Automated for sure, for regression tests
Using compiled builds from developer, automation tester (engineer) doesn't need to compile from codes.

Drawbacks:

Something to learn, takes time at the beginning (for learning also while implementing on projects).
Still need to do some 'developer' setups: installing simulators & SDKS.

Appium

Open-source tool for automating native, mobile web, and hybrid applications on iOS and Android platforms.
"Cross-platform", write tests once for multiple platforms: iOS & Android
('ideally': if the UI is totally the same, and each developer give the same 'tag' for all the UI elements between different platforms).

Appium's Philosophy

#1 "You shouldn't have to recompile your app or modify it in any way in order to automate it."

By using each platform's native automation frameworks: iOS UIAutomation, Android 4.2+ UiAutomator, Android 2.3+ Instrumentation.
We're testing the same app we're shipping!

#2 "A mobile automation framework shouldn't reinvent the wheel when it comes to automation APIs."

Wrap each of those platform's automation frameworks into One client-server API: Selenium WebDriver.

#3 "You shouldn't be locked into a specific language or framework to write and run your tests."

Selenium WebDriver API already has clients written in many popular programming language.
Appium Team has extended WebDriver for iOS & Android.

#4 "A mobile automation framework should be open source, in spirit and practice as well as in name!"

Appium is open-source!

Getting started:

Install Appium UI app
Find an app to be tested