Choosing a mobile test application tool is very difficult. There are several factors which come in the way and moreover, these factors are different for different apps and projects. Most of the tools are usually great to work with if one knows how to use them and what to get out of them. They are supportive of all types of apps- web-based, native, etc. They also have good documentation, a great community to solve queries, code samples, etc.
Following are a set of rules for designing mobile testing tools. They are end-to-end testing tools and are an open source. For using them, one needs to have proper programming skills. Thus it becomes necessary to hire mobile ui designer to carry out the works properly.
Using the UI Automator Viewer
At the first, one has to know the hierarchies of an android app, elements used by the app, how they are arranged on the screen. UI Automator Viewer by Google helps to find out the app’s view and hierarchy by viewing the name or ID of UI Components that come on screen. The above information is necessary for writing mobile test scripts. This feature is most important when Android app code is not available and one has to write the mobile test automation in the compiled .apk file. But some of the Android tools have their own UI Automator viewer to inspect elements.
Also Read: Software Testing in Java
Using Spoon
Spoon is an Android test automation framework. It can produce a result on every device or emulator that is visible to the Android Debug Bridge and connected to the test server. Java is the platform where these tests are written and can be executed from an IDF, a command line or a continuous integration server. The test code, as well as the structure of Spoon, is very easy. It needs very little knowledge of the code of the app which we are going to test.
Also Read: Software Testing vs Quality Assurance
Using Robotium
Robotium is another open source tool for Android test automation. It provides complete support for native as well as hybrid apps.
Going for Selendroid
It is yet another such automation tool. It has the potential to interact with multiple Android devices. Selendroid Inspector of Selendroid creates
- screenshot with the view locator
- record them on the mobile app
- display the HTML source of a Web view
- provide XPath helper to identify web elements
Calabash
Calabash is a cross-platform automation framework. It works for native, hybrid and IOS apps. It writes automated UI acceptance tests in Cucumber in a natural language. It can be very useful when business experts come over to deal with the acceptance criteria process
Using Appium
Appium is also cross- platform framework for native, hybrid and mobile web apps. One can use several programming languages to write test automation.
Espresso By Google
Espresso is based on Google Instrumentation Test Runner to make the automation more reliable and quicker. It is mainly for developers who have access to the app’s code base.
Conclusion
Besides the above Android-based tools, there are several IOS based tools as well. Some of them are UI Automation, IOS-driver, Keep It Functional etc.
However, the better ones are Appium, Selendroid and so on which were mentioned before. No matter whichever one uses, resource IDs of the UI components can be used as it will speed up the process of test automation and is also very reliable.
