It has been more than a year since I wrote my first blog on mobile automation using Appium for Android applications. There were many requests to come up with a similar blog for iOS applications. But due to time constraints I couldn’t get to it. But as they say, better late than never! I finally have a guide to help […]
Get Set Test an iOS app using Appium and Python
Python and Appium: Scroll through search result table
In this post we show you how to scroll through a table and identify elements. We also tackle the case where the table spans multiple pages. This is a natural and common workflow on most mobile devices. A typical use case involves the user performing a search within a mobile application. The app returns a table of results. The user […]
Android and Appium: Press Enter on the soft keyboard
Problem: Use Appium and press ‘Enter’ on the soft keyboard. This post continues our series on intermediate level problems when automating mobile application tests using Appium. We thought of sending a KeyEvent to an input (textbox) element using Appium. Superficially this appears to be trivial, but while writing the script, figured out otherwise. To our surprise, it failed. And there […]
Python Appium tests on different Android versions
Problem: UI element identifiers are not consistent across mobile platforms. Mobile is eating the world. However mobile operating systems are not yet fully mature. For example, UI element identifiers change between versions of the same OS. They also look different across Android and iOS. This causes automation scripts to be brittle. We hit this problem recently. We were writing automation […]
Pinch, Zoom and Swipe using Appium
Problem: Documentation on automating mobile gestures is not extensive. In this post, we show how to automate mobile gestures like tap, swipe, pinch and zoom using Appium. Why this post? I watched Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone back in 2007. Among the jaw dropping moments were using the best stylus ever invented (our fingers) and the multi-touch pinch-to-zoom feature. Mobile […]
Android unit testing: Android testing framework and Robolectric
Problem: There are not many good tutorials on Android unit testing Android applications are written in Java. So you probably think if you know JUnit, you can unit test Android applications. Surprise! JUnit is not sufficient for unit testing Android applications. Junit works when the code runs within a JVM. Android applications interact with the Android OS. So you need […]
appWaitActivity: A new session could not be created
While exploring Appium with mobile devices I hit the following error WebDriverException: Message: u’A new session could not be created. (Original error: atpwta.live/.activity.Main never started. Current: atpwta.live/.activity.root.TournamentList)’ Initially, I had set desired capabilities to: desired_caps[’platformName’] = ‘Android’ desired_caps[’platformVersion’] = ‘4.4’ desired_caps[’deviceName’] = ‘Moto E’ desired_caps[’appPackage’] = ‘atpwta.live’ desired_caps[’appActivity’] = ‘.activity.Main’desired_caps[‘platformName’] = ‘Android’ desired_caps[‘platformVersion’] = ‘4.4’ desired_caps[‘deviceName’] = ‘Moto E’ desired_caps[‘appPackage’] […]
Ways to identify UI elements in mobile apps
Problem: Many testers do not know how to identify UI elements in mobile apps. In this post, I explain about different ways to find UI elements in Android’s calculator app. I also show you examples of using Appium’s API with the different locator strategies. Why this post? Identifying UI elements is a key component of writing UI automation. Most testers […]
Appium tutorial: Execute Python tests on mobile devices
This Appium tutorial will show you how to run automated tests on a real physical device. We estimate skimming through this post will take you 10 minutes. We estimate working through this post, step by step, will take you about 90 minutes. In this post we will cover getting setup with Appium, interfacing with real devices, writing and running Appium […]
BrowserStack configuration for Selenium automation
BrowserStack has a number of useful configuration options. In this post, we will show you how to make your automated test runs to use specific configuration parameters of BrowserStack. We walk you through the steps needed to modify your existing automated test runs to use specific configuration parameters of BrowserStack. We assume you have a BrowserStack account. If not, please […]