Mobile App Automated Testing Tools

Hi Guys

In this post we’ll talk about the importance of automated mobile app testing and how it can help you in your QA testing process, when testing iOS and Android mobile apps. We’ll also look at some of the more popular mobile app automated testing tools out there, and the features they offer for facilitating automated testing of mobile apps.

As you know agile development processes have become quite popular in the software development industry during the past couple of years. Agile development processes are typically used on projects where the development requirements are constantly changing from the customer’s end (based on the continuous interaction and collaboration between the client & the development team) and where the customer wants the final product developed in small iterations.

In such development environments, the use of mobile app automated testing tools is quite common since they can speed up the QA testing process tremendously and help the development team meet the tight deadlines of their quality assurance and testing activities, without compromising on the overall quality of the developed application.

At Folio3, we’re also using various advanced mobile app automated testing tools, to test the native, hybrid and mobile-web apps we develop for the iOS and Android platforms. In the paragraphs below, we’ll talk about the mobile app automated testing tools we use in our testing and QA activities.

Mobile App Automated Testing Tools – MonkeyTalk

One of the more popular mobile app automated testing tools we use is MonkeyTalk, which is a comprehensive functional testing tool. It’s open source, so it’s free to download and use. It supports automated testing for both iOS and Android apps, whether they’re native apps, hybrid apps or mobile-web apps.

Since MonkeyTalk is multi-platform, it allows you to reuse test cases that you created for one mobile platform for other mobile platforms as well. For example, you can reuse the same test cases you created for automated testing of the app on iOS, in Android as well. MonkeyTalk supports automated testing on both phone and tablet devices. It offers a variety of testing methods, from simple smoke tests to data driven test execution.

Since MonkeyTalk supports both emulator based and physical device based automated testing, you don’t need to have a physical device handy in order to conduct automated testing using MonkeyTalk. The tool also provides HTML / XML based reporting after test execution, so you can view the results of the test instantly.

The major features that are provided by this tool include recording and playback, the ability to create, run and edit test suites, and test case writing (both in MonkeyTalk language as well as JavaScript). Using MonkeyTalk you can validate the controls, images, text and different properties of any used object. As such it’s quite a useful tool for running automated testing on mobile apps.

Mobile App Automated Testing Tools – UI Testing Automation Tool within Xcode

One of the other mobile app automated testing tools we use quite frequently is the UI test case automation tool available within Xcode IDE. This mobile app testing automation tool can automate UI testing scripts, for testing specific actions that will be performed on the iOS Application. It offers a JavaScript programming interface via which you can execute the written test scripts as well as providing a detailed log of the simulated test.

This UI testing automation tool can be used in combination with other tools in Xcode to perform specific types of tests like memory leakage testing, to track performance related issues within your iOS app.

Using this UI testing automation tool, you can create and execute automated test scripts, access and manipulate the UI Elements of an app, and perform UI gestures like tapping, pinching, dragging, flicking, entering text, navigating and scrolling to elements. The tool also logs the results of the automated tests as well as the test data provided. It also provides exception/alert handling, manages device orientation and multi-tasking support i.e. suspending the app for specified time durations.

Mobile App Automated Testing Tools – Robotium

The other automated testing tool we use at Folio3 is Robotium, which is specifically used for conducting automated testing of Android apps (both Native and Hybrid). Robotium allows our developers to write short but powerful automated test scripts with minimal understanding of app, meaning that you don’t to necessarily be familiar with the app’s functionality/feature set in order to run automated testing on it using Robotium. Robotium supports both emulator based and device based automated testing.

Some of the other major features that Robotium provides include:

• Rapid test execution – via its use of automatic timing and delays
• APIs that interact directly with the UI controls of the Android app such as EditText, menus, buttons, etc.
• The ability to run automated testing on the android app without having access to its source code
• The ability to detect messages that are shown on the screen (Toasts)
• Since its built on JUnit, it offers the same features that JUnit does
• Automatic handling of Scrolling activity i.e. it can decide when to scroll the content given on the screen
• Visual representation (reporting) of test results

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As a leading iPhone and Android app development company (iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, HTML5 app development), Folio3 specializes in native app development services and cross platform mobile app development services (for both enterprise and consumer oriented apps) for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. We also provide mobile app QA testing services including automated mobile app testing. If you have a mobile app idea that you’d like to discuss please Contact Us or learn more about our iPhone Android and Windows Phone app development services

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