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Bethany Wilson
Bethany Wilson

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Making a Move to Automation Testing with Appium

There is a meteoric rise of mobile applications with a colossal number of consumers ready-to-use applications. It becomes imperative to provide consumers with a seamless mobile app experience. There is a constant demand for developing more mobile applications that are faster and comes with great quality. To ensure great quality, bug-free mobile application, Appium is used. Appium is the most popular mobile app test automation tool specialized in testing native, mobile and hybrid applications for Windows, Android and iOS.

In this article, you will get to know the worth of automation testing with Appium tool.

What is Appium?

It is an open-source framework through which testers and developers can perform automated mobile app testing on platforms such as Windows, Android and iOS.

It provides automated testing for:

  • Mobile web applications: It can be accessed using in-built native browser applications for android devices and mobile browsers such as Chrome, Safari etc.

  • Native mobile applications: These are written using Windows SDKs, Android and iOS

  • Hybrid mobile applications: The web view has a native wrapper around it.

The Appium architecture framework:

Node.js is the platform on which Appium is written. Appium is an HTTP server that implements Selenium WebDriver and the purpose of setting up is done by REST (Representational State Transfer) API.

Following are some of the actions performed by REST API:

• The connection is received from the client-side
• The command is being listened
• The command is executed on a mobile device
• The command execution status is returned as an HTTP response to the client.

Automation is done by appium in the session context. This session is initiated by the client as per the client library (C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Java), and when a session request/POST is sent to the server, then it means the session is coming to an end with the support of JSON object that is termed as “desired capabilities” object.

The automation session is initiated by the server and responds with a session ID through which other relevant commands is sent to the given session.

How does Appium Work?

Appium automatically interacts with an application by leveraging the behavior of the various components such as links in the UI, text boxes and buttons. Tests can be written and then run repeatedly at various sessions against the given application.

Appium on Android:

The UI Automator framework (Selendroid) is used by Appium so that the Android user interface can be tested to automate applications on Android device testing. The bootstrap.jar file works as a TCP server through which the test command is sent for acting on the Android device with the help of the Selendroid or UI Automator framework.

Appium on iOS:

For iOS devices, JSON wire protocol is used by Appium. For conducting automated iOS device testing, Apple’s UI Automation API is used to interact with the user interface elements. The bootstrap.js file works as a TCP server, through which the test command is sent for acting on the iOS device with the help of Apple’s UI Automation API framework.

Following are a few key reasons that depict the scope of automated testing by leveraging Appium:

  • TestNG testing framework is synchronized with appium
  • Detailed information logs are produced and a detailed reporting structure is provided so that the test results can be better analyzed and debugging is improved
  • Test code is written in different languages such as C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Java etc.)
  • The same code can be reused for different device platforms such as Windows, Android and iOS
  • The Application Under Test need not be recompiled or modified by the testers as Appium uses the standard automation APIs on all platforms.

Conclusion:

If you are looking forward to implementing DevOps for your specific organization, then do get connected with a premium Automation testing services that will provide professional consultation and support on developing a crystal-clear DevOps strategy.

About the author:I am a technical content writer focused on writing technology specific articles. I strive to provide well-researched information on the leading market savvy technologies.

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