Best practices to design an hybrid-app automation framework with today’s de-facto standards: WebDriver, Selenium and Appium.

DESIGNING AN EFFECTIVE HYBRID APPS AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK

Andrea Tino

#test #hybrid-apps #selenium#webdriver #appium #automation

The testing series

This is NOT

What’s in the box...

This isAn overview about most recent technologies in hybrid apps testing and automation!

A tutorial to set up a working environment!

ACTORS & STAGESThe world of hybrid apps development and testing

is made of some different products that today form a real platform available for everyone.

Since one picture is worth a thousand words, the situation today is depicted here!

W3C

Selenium

WebDriver specification

publishes & updates

Selenium Team Appium

implements

develops based on

Appium Teamdevelops

Appium drivers

App testers

develops

usedevelop

Tests

execute on

Browsers & devices

use

use

What do we aim for?

So...

High business impact and value through testing...

...with the least effort!

TWO FACES OF THE SAME COINSelenium and Appium are not two different things, they actually work to reach the same objective.

WebDriver C# Java Javascript...JSON over HTTP

Selenium

Test server

Windows Android iOSFirefox

Firefox driver

Chrome

Chrome driver

Spartan

Spartan driver

Safari

Safari driver

Appium

WHY NOT HAVING BOTH?Selenium and Appium are not two different things, they

actually work to reach the same objective.

Selenium can achieve running the same test n all major browsers!

On browsers

Selenium Appium

Appium can achieve running the same test on all major platforms!

On devicesSame test can run on browsers and devices thanks to unique API!

Together

CODE ONCE, TEST FOR ALL!The key strategy is taking advantage of Selenium and

Appium in order to have tests be executed everywhere!

We must aim at building an infrastructure execute every test on all browsers and devices our application must support.

Target: multiplatform

Tests Test server

develop

DevicesBrowsers

executes on

send commands

to

send commands

to

C#JAVAJS

RUBY

TestersWeb

applications

targeting

BUILD THE ABSTRACTION LAYERSelenium and Appium are two different products, however they are compatible!

Automation abstraction

Implemented by the user to abstract Selenium and Appium.

Appium Server

Browsers Devices Simulators

Automation

Selenium API

Provides all functions to get access to elements and other resources in

the web application.

Appium API

Since Selenium and Appium are both based on WebDriver, it is possible to create an abstraction layer.

WebDriver does the trick

Build a thin layer that your tests will use in order to abstract lower logic. Like this a test will not know whether it is automating a browser or an app!

Objective

BUILDING AN AUTOMATION FRAMEWORKOnce your abstraction is ready, you need to build a testing

framework which executes your tests on all platforms.

Tests: platform agnostic

The engine will deal with platform specific API.

Configurable engine

Which platforms? How many times?

Having a single test be executed as many times as many platforms are supported by the application!

Objective

PCs Tablets Phones

Automation engine

feeded to

Test suite

tested against

The EndTHANK YOUTwitter: @_atinoE-Mail: andry.tino@hotmail.com

This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Cover and 2nd page: illustration from the Appleseed Saga by Masamune Shiro.

This work includes edited arts by Microsoft Clip Art.

This work includes icons and graphics designed by Freepik.com.

May - June 2015v1.0