Only an excellent user interface (UI) can deliver a good user experience. This is the reason why Android developers continue to perform automation tests. They want to create apps that will stimulate a high user retention rate.
UI testing involves analyzing the visual elements of apps, which users get to interact with. UI testing framework is any tool that allows you to check if your app's user interface operates uniformly across various devices.
Web testers usually perform several operations using an automated testing framework. Statistics reveal that 78% of organizations use automation tests for regression or functional testing.
The main elements involved in the automated website testing process include:
- đ¨ Visual design
- âī¸ Functionality
- đšī¸ Usability
- ⥠Performance
â Why Go For Automated Website Testing?
A reliable free automation testing for software can benefit you with proven testing solutions. You get to benefit from Android testing, and:
- Web Testing
- iOS Testing
- Selenium Testing
- Appium Testing
Automated website testing involves:
- Automated website testing tools
- Free automation tools for web applications testing
- Automated knowledge testing dashboard
- Automated software testing
- Automated testing suites
- Website test script
The automated testing framework is necessary to ensure:
- A bug-free user interface where you get to debug fast
- Elimination of possible errors that the human eye may fail to capture
Missing these errors and fixing them at later stages is costly. Automation testing also allows you to run and reuse your tests reliably.
So, any application with loyal users needs constant user interface checks. And, automated website testing is the best way to ensure this.
It helps to know that there are mobile automation tests for Android, Windows devices, and iOS. But, our article takes a look at the top 3 UI frameworks for Android automation testing.
Source: PixabayđŠ UI Automator
UI Automator is a basic framework. It enables you to conduct more UI testing against Android apps and games. You can write the test cases in Java or Kotlin.
The framework contains two sets of APIs, including:
- UI Automator APIs - it allows the managing of the app's UI components
- Device State APIs - gives access to operate the device.
The test framework permits you to analyze the user interface of your native Android apps on different devices. This means that you can test any app installed on an Android device.
This framework is considered very effective. It enables writing test cases without fully knowing the apps' implementation details.
The framework also contains a UI Automator Viewer option. This excellent feature allows the study and analysis of UI components in mobile devices.
How Can You Benefit from UIAutomator?
It can interact well with different Android apps. And its APIs enable the performance of tasks like screen rotation on a test device.
With the UI Automator APIs, you can perform operations like opening the app launcher or settings menu in a test device.
This testing framework is also suitable for writing the black box-style automated tests. In this case, the test code doesn't depend on the internal implementation details of the targeted app.
The UI Automator operates JUnit test cases with unique privileges. This implies that test cases can span across various processes.
The key features that aid the UI Automator testing framework include:
- A viewer - helps to inspect the layout hierarchy
- APIs - used in supporting cross-app UI testing
- An API - used to retrieve state information and carry out operations on target devices.
The main advantage of the UI Automator is that it supports testing on devices from Android version 4.1. Furthermore, it uses a simple API framework.
đĒ Appium
Appium is a mobile test automation framework used for native, hybrid, and web apps for Android. It supports:
- Android via UI Automator (API level 16 and above)
- Seledroid (API level below 16)
- Mobile web as Selenium booster for Android.
One significant advantage of Appium is that you can write your Appium scripts using any programming language such as:
- Java
- Objective-C
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Ruby
- Python
The framework is compatible across the most significant platforms like Android and iOS. It also gives freedom not to install and configure devices to test every time.
If you're well-familiarized with Selenium, then it becomes easier for you to use Appium for mobile app testing. These two use the same WebDriver.
Appium and Selenium also similarly use the same Desired Capabilities. Therefore, configuring an application to run on Selenium is a lot similar to Appium.
Why Do People Use Appium for Android Automation Testing?
It offers cross-platform support. A written Appium test can also run in iOS and Android without the need to change the code. You can run several tests on many platforms all at once. You can also run the same test on any device or OS version.
It provides a record and playback. You can use inspectors to accelerate testing efforts via the record and playback functionality in Appium. It helps record the behavior of the native app by inspecting the Document Object Model (DOM).
Appium can easily mingle with Continuous Integration (CI) tools. Examples of these tools include Jenkins, Bamboo, and Bitrise. This integration enables the automated triggering of tests through release cycles.
Appium is also free, and you can quickly download it. You don't need an additional installation on the device to support Appium. It has excellent community support.
đĢ Espresso
Espresso is Google's latest android user interface (UI) testing framework. The origin of the term Espresso is Italian, meaning Coffee. It's a simple but efficient and flexible testing framework.
You can write Espresso tests both in Java and Kotlin. These are modern languages of programming used in developing android applications.
Developers and testers are now using the open-source Espresso framework to bring out the best UIs. Espresso has small, predictable, and easy-to-learn APIs. You can use it to write brief and reliable Android UI tests quickly. It is supported on:
- API level 8 (Froyo)
- 10 (Gingerbread)
- 15 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and onwards
Espresso is fast and reliable when synchronizing with the UI thread. This is because there's no need for sleepssleep. Instead, tests will run in the same millisecond when an app becomes idle.
Source: Pixabayâī¸ Key Takeaways
Automated UI testing web is the only way to create Android apps to increase user experience. Hence, automated testing is reliable; it operates faster than manual testing. It boosts the development team's productivity, thus quicker feedback.
The automated testing framework is essential to ensure a bug-free user interface. It also helps avoid possible errors that you may not capture with your eyes.
The development team can spend too much time debugging tests without the software testing platform. The beauty here is that we've discussed the best UI frameworks for Android automation testing that should guide you best.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://localazy.com/blog/top-3-ui-frameworks-android-automation-testing