AN OVERVIEW

OF

Appium

Feb. 2014

Daniel Puterman (LinkedIn, twitter)

Sr. developer

whoami?

• Been programming forever.

• Currently lead developer at Applitools (check out our intro video).

• Before:• Vioozer

• iCircl

• Matrix

• Beyond Security

• ….

• Team leader, Developer, Entreprenuer.

“Appium is an open source test automation framework for use with

native and hybrid mobile apps.”

APPIUM AUTOMATES MOBILE APPS

A rising star..

DEMOCode for the demo available in:https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

Automating with Appium

Appium was created with 4 design goals in mind:

• Test the same app you submit to the market place.

• Write tests in any language, on any platform.

• Use standard automation specification / api.

• Open source.

Soooo… Ummmm……

WebDriver!

How does it work?

Instruments

UIAutomator

Test Code

Therefore…

ONE

SCRIPT

TO

RULE

THEM

ALL

No Proprietary IDE / Language

OPEN SOURCE

APACHE LICENSE 2.0

https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/LICENSE

• Native & Hybrid apps• Real devices & Simulators• Available also on the grid (e.g., SauceLabs)

Supported platforms

And….• Even works with Robots

A little deeper: Android

A little deeper: iOS

Show me the code!Code for available in:https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

Finding elements

Appium translates webdriver “find” commands to the relevant automation API provided by each platform:

Four “find” methods available• “name”: The text on the element / accessibility identifier

• “tag_name”: the type of an element, e.g., “button”, “textfield” etc.• Mapping:

https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/lib/devices/ios/uiauto/lib/mechanic.js#L29

• “Xpath”: Using the element hierarchy.

• “ID”: Available for Android when running with “selendroid” as device.

Finding elements by name

driver.find_element(:name, “New note”)Searches label text / accessibility fields for each platform (“contentDescription” on android, “name” on iOS)

Finding elements by tag name

driver.find_element(:tag_name, “textfield”)Searches for an element of the specified type.

Finding elements by xpath

@driver.find_element(:xpath, '//text[contains(@value, “another”)]')

@driver.find_element(:xpath, '//text[last()]')

There are limitations, of course!

• Instruments is a singleton• No parallel testing of iOS apps on the same OSX instance.

• Limited VM scalability.

• Appium is a relatively new product and is in the process of maturing.

• Documentation is not bad, but can be improved quite a bit.

• Error messages (especially for iOS) can be sometimes hard to figure out.

The future

• Mobile Json Wire Protocol (part of Selenium 3) https://code.google.com/p/selenium/source/browse/spec-draft.md?repo=mobile

• Joint effort of Appium, Facebook, Ebay and Mozilla

• Appium would implement the protocol + backwordcompatibility.

• Additional platforms

• Appium Doctor

• Advanced gestures

Tips I: Appium setup

• Pay attention to the requirements!• Node version (>= 0.8)

• Android API >= 17 (i.e. 4.2.2 and above)• Windows is still considered beta, though seems to be working fine

• iOS• Mac OS X 10.7 or higher, 10.8.4 recommended

• XCode >= 4.6.3

• Apple Developer Tools (iPhone simulator SDK, command line tools)

• For Mac, make sure you use the XCode version matching the iOSversion you wish to test

• https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/docs/running-on-osx.md#testing-against-multiple-ios-sdks

Tips II: running Appium

• Desired capabilities, Desired capabilities, Desired capabilities!

• On linux/Mac use ‘sudo –E’ (or ‘sudo –sE’) to have the environment variables available when Appium is run.

• Notice the IP you listen to when starting Appium (the ‘-a’ parameter):• 127.0.0.1 will only listen to itself and localhost.

• 0.0.0.0 will listen to itself, localhost, 127.0.0.1 and the actual computer IP(s).

• Parallel testing?• Run multiple Appium servers, each listening to a different port, and to a

specific device using the ‘–U’ option.

• Use ‘–full-reset’ when running on Android, so tests will start from a clean environment.

FAQ

Q: Can I automate webview applications?

A: Definitely.1. If you’re using Android, the “device” in the desired capabilities should be set to

“selendroid”.

2. Switch to webview: driver.switch_to_window(“WEBVIEW”)

3. Automate as standard web.

4. If required: driver.switch_to_window(“NATIVE”)

Q: What about an application which activates another application? (FB, maps etc.)

A: Depends• For Android, not a problem.

• For iOS, switching to a different application loses the context in which the automation run. You need to create a new session when coming back from the external application.https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/appium-discuss/38wLkiS_7L0

FAQ Cont.

Q: Can I automate an application already installed on a device (without having the app file on my computer)?

A: Yes and no • Android: You can, either for simulator or for real device (just set ‘app-package’ and ‘app-activity’).

• iOS: No problem if you use a simulator (use ‘bundleId’ as the value to the ‘app’ parameter), but for a real device you must have the app file on your computer.

UI ValidationDEMO

Code for available in:https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

Additional resources

• Appium website• Home: http://appium.io/

• Documentation: http://appium.io/getting-started.html

• Appium forum on google. If you have a question or a problem, this is the place to go.• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/appium-discuss

• Code for the demos• https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

Thanks!