Getting Started with Automation

Hi all in this post is about moving your manual testing efforts into automation testing for your native and hybrid android application. Once you decided to for automation to save time for release cycle and to release quality App , then next step is to decide on which tool is suitable for your application, organization and team so that you can benefit form your automates test suits.

I am going to share with some top most automation testing tools for native and hybrid android application with their pros and cons so that you can make a better choice and take first step towards automation.

1. Appium

Appium is open source tool available for native and hybrid mobile applications testing for android as well as iOS. Appium uses vendor provided automation frameworks under the hood such as Apple's UI automator for iOS apps, for android apps 4.2 and above UIAutomator and 2.3 to 4.1 Selendroid.

Appium's architecture is client server based architecture. Appium server exposes REST API which recieves connections form client and executes those commands on mobile devices.Automation is performed in form of sessions and Desired Capabilities and the key to send information to server regarding the requires session.

Pros-

1. Appium client libraries supports multiple languages hence you can write test cases in different languages like Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript and C#.

2. Appium supports cross platfrom script development.

3. Appium has large community support where you ask and share.

4. It supportd test running on physical devices as well as Emulators.

5. Supprt for native and hybrid mobile application for android as well as iOS.

6. Record and play back is available for Mac OS 

Cons- 

1. Record and play back is not available on Windows OS. 

Documentation is not user friendly.

3. Does not support image comparison.

4. Setting up takes some time especially in case of Linux system.

5. Limites Support for Gestures.

6. Limited support for android version < 4.1

7. No Support for Toast Messages.

 

2. Robotium

Robotium is also an open source automation testing framework for android. With robotium is very effective to write black box test cases and if you have sorce code you can also go for grey box testing.Its API is very simple and you can quickly start writing the UI automated test cases.

Pros-

1. Simple APIs provides to write test cases so that you can concentrate more on your test scenarios.

2. Supports back box as well as grey box testing.

3. Easy integration with Gradle, ANT and Maven.

4. Can be used with Jacoco to measure code coverage.

Cons-

1. To write test cases using Robotium one must have knowledge of Java 

3. Espresso

Espresso is an open source framework for native android applications developed by Google.Espresso is build on top of Android Instrumentation Framework.Espresso supports white box testing too.

Pros-

1. Supported for all android versions.

2. Simpler and Quicker to setup.

3. Supports Jacoco to measure code coverage.

4. Extensive testing is possible as it covers many UI actions and gestures.

Cons-

1. The test cases are written inside the android application project code and hence building project to run test case takes lot of time.

4. UIAutomator-

UIAutomator is test framework by Google fr native android apps and games.It comes with APIs to create UI test cases and execution engine.It supports devices with API level 16 and above. It is very good for native apps but lacks support for web views and hybrid apps.

Pros-

1.Simple and Easy to learn information is available.

2. Support is strongly maintained by Google.

3. Possible to to do cloud bases test management.

Cons-

1. Supports android version greater than 4.1.

2. Web view is not supported.