Mobile application plays a crucial role in the present day digital environment, especially for any business that is functioning in today’s world. It is particularly so for e-business, social networking, and enterprise mobility, where users require identical user experience irrespective of the platform they are operating. However, the degree of consistency and quality is not easily attained, let alone daily – let’s not forget that mobile devices, in terms of operating systems and browsers, come in an assortment.
In this context, we will learn how to create a robust and extensible mobile test automation framework using Appium – an open-source tool for mobile test automation – and LambdaTest, the cross-browser testing cloud. Mobile-friendly testing, alongside the deployment of the enumerated tools, will assist companies in adopting an efficient and scalable automated mobile testing approach.
Understanding Mobile Test Automation
It is important to understand the importance of using mobile test automation before getting into the details of developing a test automation framework.
Mobile test automation is the activity of running mobile applications through test cases to determine if the applications would perform optimally under different scenarios. The following are the primary advantages of mobile test automation:
- Faster Testing: Regression testing can be accelerated by automating tests, which enables teams to test several scenarios concurrently and find bugs and performance problems more rapidly.
- Consistency: Since automated tests are repeatable and consistent, they are less likely to contain human mistakes than manual testing.
- Scalability: Automation makes it possible to test across many operating systems and devices, guaranteeing a consistent user experience.
- Continuous Integration (CI): Teams can incorporate automated tests into their CI/CD pipelines to get immediate feedback on how well code changes are working.
Getting the most out of mobile test automation, however, requires developing a framework that is both scalable—that is, able to manage an increasing number of tests as the application develops—and robust—that is, dependable and stable. A responsive checker can also be used during this process to validate how well applications adapt to different devices and screen sizes.
What Makes a Mobile Test Automation Framework Robust and Scalable?
Reliability and maintainability are guaranteed by a strong mobile test automation system, which yields consistent outcomes across time.
A mobile test automation framework is resilient and scalable due to a number of features:
- Reusability: To cut down on redundancy and save time, tests, libraries, and components should be reused across several circumstances.
- Modularization: A modular structure guarantees simple framework maintenance and scalability while enabling independent component testing.
- Cross-Platform Capability: The framework needs to provide testing across a broad range of devices and on both the iOS and Android mobile platforms.
- Parallel Execution: The framework should provide parallel test execution across several devices and environments in order to increase testing speed and scalability.
- Simple Integration: In order to guarantee continuous testing and prompt feedback, the framework should be able to interact with CI/CD pipelines easily.
- Logging and Reporting: Effective logging and reporting systems enable testers to keep test quality high and spot problems fast.
Now that we know what makes a test automation framework scalable and resilient, let’s use Appium and LambdaTest to develop one.
Why Appium?
Appium is one of the most used open-source tools for mobile automation testing and is famous for its flexibility, which also supports mobile, hybrid, and native web applications.
Key Features of Appium:
- Cross-Platform Support: Another plus of the Appium is the elimination of the need to write different scripts for the two different platforms.
- Multiple Language Support: The uses of Appium by developers and testers include the ability to write tests in the language of developers’ choice and other features such as – Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and C#, among others.
- Integration with Well-Known Testing Frameworks: Moreover, arranging and summoning test cases is very convenient with the help of Appium, which supports the usage of distinguished test frameworks like TestNG, JUnit, and Mocha, among others.
- Support for Devices and Emulators/Simulators: A major advantage of Appium is that it can run tests on emulators or simulators. At the same time, it can also run tests on real devices – a vital aspect when testing on multiple devices.
- No Need to Change the App: Appium is ideal for testing apps that are production-freeride because it does not modify the mobile app in any way.
It was seen that Appium is very helpful in establishing a robust and highly scalable model for mobile test automation due to its support and versatility.
Why LambdaTest?
LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross-browser testing software for automating cross-browser testing across multiple real devices and browser OS combinations.
- Parallel Test Execution: LambdaTest permits the execution of multiple tests at the same time, which means the time consumed for testing will be minimized when using this framework and the bandwidth of the framework also increases.
- Integration with CI/CD: LambdaTest easily synchronizes with continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, and TravisCI, where Lambda Test technologies can run tests as part of the build process.
Building a Robust and Scalable Mobile Test Automation Framework with Appium and LambdaTest
Now, let’s discuss the different phases required to accomplish the goal of having a powerful and future-proof mobile test automation framework using Appium and LambdaTest.
Step 1: Set Up the Development Environment
Before starting to write tests, you need to set up your development environment.
- Install Node.js and NPM: To run Appium, it is recommended to install Node.js as its basis as the server for running the GUI and web applications. It can be downloaded from node js org.
- Install Appium: Appium can be installed via the npm package. To install Appium globally, type the following command in the terminal.
npm install -g appium
- Install Required Dependencies:
- For Android, install Android Studio and the necessary SDK tools.
- Regarding iOS, Xcode must be installed, and it is also necessary to configure necessary iOS simulators.
- Install LambdaTest Appium Plugin: Extending on this, LambdaTest provides an Appium plugin that fits well with the Appium ecosystem.
Step 2: Create the Test Scripts
When you are done setting up your environment, you can write test scripts by using Appium.
- Choose Your Test Language: For testing, choose the desired programming language you wish to use – Java, Python, and so on.
- Set Up Desired Capabilities: Defined capabilities in the scenarios of Appium describe the properties of the environment we want to test, for instance, the kind of a device, the version of the operating system, and the application being tested, among others.
Example for an Android app:
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(“platformName”, “Android”);
capabilities.setCapability(“deviceName”, “Samsung Galaxy S9”);
capabilities.setCapability(“app”, “/path/to/app.apk”);
capabilities.setCapability(“automationName”, “UiAutomator2”);
- Write Tests Using Appium: Use Appium’s WebDriver API to write tests for your mobile app. For example, you can test interactions like clicking buttons, entering text, or validating content on the screen.
Step 3: Integrate LambdaTest for Cross-Browser and Device Testing
Once the test scripts are created, now it’s time to incorporate LambdaTest into the framework.
- Configure LambdaTest Grid: In order to specify the devices and browsers for which the tests must be run, use LambdaTest’s cloud grid. You can specify the device name, platform, and browser version using LambdaTest’s capabilities.
Example:
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(“platformName”, “Android”);
capabilities.setCapability(“deviceName”, “Google Pixel 3”);
capabilities.setCapability(“browserName”, “Chrome”);
capabilities.setCapability(“platformVersion”, “9.0”);
capabilities.setCapability(“build”, “Appium Build”);
capabilities.setCapability(“name”, “Mobile Test on LambdaTest”);
- Run Tests on LambdaTest Cloud: Once the configurations are done, your Appium tests will run on LambdaTest’s cloud grid, providing access to a vast array of real devices and platforms.
- Leverage Parallel Execution: The autotests in LambdaTest can be set up in parallel so that the testing can be done in parallel on multiple devices.
Step 4: Integrate with CI/CD for Continuous Testing
To ensure your tests run automatically with each new code change, integrate the framework with your CI/CD pipeline.
- Set Up Jenkins (or any other CI tool): Set up Jenkins to trigger automated tests on new commits.
- Integrate LambdaTest with Jenkins: Use the LambdaTest plugin for Jenkins to run tests on LambdaTest’s cloud grid directly from Jenkins.
- Monitor Results: Monitor the results through LambdaTest’s dashboard, which provides detailed insights, screenshots, and video recordings for each test.
Step 5: Analyze Results and Optimize
After running the tests, analyze the results to identify any issues. LambdaTest provides detailed logs, screenshots, and videos, which can help in identifying and debugging problems. Once the issues are fixed, continue adding more tests and scaling the framework as needed.
In Conclusion
When it comes to mobile testing, Appium, combined with the LambdaTest platform, can help teams create a scalable test automation framework conducive to the testing of mobile apps across different devices and operating systems.
