Appium

1. The Future of Mobile Automation Testing,
Appium steals it!!
Srinivasan Sekar
Appium Member

2. Agenda
• Problem Statement
• Solutions Available
• Best Solution’s adopted by Appium
• Q & A

3. Problem Statement
• Inspector
• Locator Strategies
• UIAutomation Support
• UIAutomator2 Framework
• Handling Multiple Sessions at a time
• Wearables/tvOS Support

4. Inspector
• Calabash IRB
• Works well with applications developed on different technology
• To find right match, user have to do lot of hit and trials in irb
• Identifies the elements based on visibility
• Doesn’t have any control over other apps installed in device
• Not user friendly
• Appium Inspector
• Not Actively maintained by Appium team
• Doesn’t have any control over other apps installed in device
• At times appium-dot-app crashes abruptly during inspection
• Selendroid Inspector
• Doesn’t have any control over other apps installed in device
• Doesn’t render UIElements in screen for certain applications or applications developed on
certain technologies

5. Solution
• iOS - Facebook’s WebDriverAgent Inspector:
• Developed in node.js
• WDA is an iOS app installed in Simulator or Device which takes best control of apps on device and Rendering
is based on visibility of elements
• Android – Google’s uiautomatorviewer
• Works absolutely fine for android apps
• Doesn’t support Multi-Window searches for API level 21+ and prior to API level 21 we can access active
window
• https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?

6. UIAutomation support
Problem Statement
Apple no more support’s UIAutomation but does XCUITest to automate iOS applications.
Solutions

7. UIAutomator2 Framework
UIAutomator2
Backward Compatibility
Performance
Toast Messages
Push Notifications

8. Handling Multiple Sessions
Problem Statement
• Parallel Execution of tests across multiple iOS real devices and simulators simultaneously
Solution’s Available
• FB’s Simulator Control controls iOS Simulators by manipulating the system.
• Appium supports multiple sessions on real devices.
• Appium : simctl -> fbsimctl

9. Wearables/tvOS Support
• Testing Apps in Android wearables are feasible with many existing frameworks
already
• iOS Apple Watch and tvOS Support is a concern for many already
• As said earlier XCUITestDriver supports tvOS through WDA. Expect a complete
support in near future.
• Appium Driver is designed in such a way that it can be easily adopted and write
wrapper on top of existing Mobile Json Wire methods to support any apps.
• E.g: https://github.com/YOU-i-Labs/appium-youiengine-driver

10. Sources
• DroidDriver - https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/droiddriver
• DroidDriver - https://github.com/appium/droiddriver
• UIAutomator v2- https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/uiautomator/+/master
• Facebook’s WDA – https://github.com/facebook/FBSimulatorControl
• Facebook’s fbsimtcl - https://github.com/facebook/FBSimulatorControl
• Google EarlGrey - https://github.com/google/EarlGrey
• https://github.com/appium/appium-xcuitest-driver
• https://github.com/appium/appium-uiautomator2-driver
• https://github.com/appium/appium-uiautomator2-server
• https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/4369
• https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=207569
• https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/4869
• https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/4858