Mobile Apps have certainly grown luxuriantly and is not just a fad. Certainly because of the usability level they render makes them the apple of the user’s eye. However, in order to meet the needs of this turbulently changing technology you need to make use of tools which can automate the development process and help you adapt the changes quite frequently.
It is noted that 80% of bugs tends to reproduce on all the platforms. Due to this one can perform tests on platforms which are used by multitudes and still can find out 80% errors or bugs. And this is not it as the renaming 20% will be found on other platforms as well. Wherefore, this indicates that you should go for testing on a limited number of platforms rather than degrading the quality to test on a wide range of devices.
In this blog we will discuss tools which are mostly related to testing process which can help to expedite your app development process.
Robotium
Robotium is one of the most popular testing tools for Android based softwares. This free testing tool can be used for running automated tests on a wide range of Android systems. It is also known as Selenium for Android among the developer community. The tests created by this tool are written in Java and it also is a library which stores unit tests.
A lot of time and efforts are required to make tests via Robotium, as it requires the programmer to work with the source code so as to run automated tests. Speaking of its disadvantage it also do not allow communication with system software as it does not lock and unlock the smartphone or any of the handheld devices you are working. Apart from this you cannot have screenshots and also cannot use Play as well as Record function.
MonkeyRunner
Those who are looking for a tool which can perform all the testing process easily making to automated for functional test for Android apps must for Monkey Runner. This tool is of lower level than Robotium. The developers do not have to delve into the source code so as to do automated tests. In these tools the test cases a written in Python, thus a recording tool can be used for doing the tests.
This tool has the capability of running tests on real time devices which are connected to emulators or personal computers. Along with that, it also allows you to have a comprehensive control over their smartphone, phablet , tablets or emulators even from places which are not in the Android code.
As we know that nothing in this world is immaculate thus these testing tools also come with some flaws as well. To use these tools you need to write individual scripts for each of the devices. Apart from this MonkeyRunner is that the test needs some tweaking after every test cycle of the program gets changed.
Genymotion
For those who need an emulator for a comprehensive development cycle which comprises of Development as well as testing their Android apps can for Genymotion. Talking about its features it offers features, this tool offers 20 pre-configured devices , emulated Application programming interfaces, OpenGL acceleration, CPU and many more such things. Using this tool you can get support for all the major devices and run all the tests outside of all the applications.
[irp]Appium Android Automation Framework
If you need to create automated test for your Android and iOS apps, then you can make use of Appium Android Automation. It is a free tool which supports Android 2.3 and above. This tool makes use of the WebDriver interface for running all the tests. Apart from this it offers a great deal of compatibility with programing languages such as Java, Ruby, C# and many other which are present in the WebDrivers library.
It can work on browsers such as Chrome and Safari when it comes to mobile devices. This tool also makes sure for the developers to test their mobile sites with the help of Appium and other web browsers. However, it was noticed that there are test engineers who provide not as competent and not complete reports. Apart from this it does not provides support to XPath on handheld devices.
Fluid
If you are looking for a prototyping tool for softwares for developing mobile apps such as Android, iOS and Windows, then you can opt for Fluid. It covers for about 2,000 UI widgets for developing extremely successful apps for different fields. This software helps you to build a prototype on a desktop and using that you can view the user interface of the your designed object right before starting the coding process. Using Fluid you can also create prototypes for online collaboration, navigation between screens, incorporating gestures and many more such things.
[irp]iOS-driver (iOS)
No matter whether you chose WebDriver API/ Selenium for automating your native or hybrid mobile app, you can count on ios-driver which is compatible with them and offers easy automation process to the developers. It renders complete integration with Selenium Grid so that one can use your existing automation infrastructure which comprises of utility as well as helper classes.
[irp]KeepItFunctional (iOS)
KIF is the acronym for Keep it functional, which is an iOS integration framework for testing. Using this tool you can easily automate your iOS apps by making use of its accessibility attributes which is available for differently able people. In this tool the test are performed on the XCTest testing standard. The testing process goes on consistently in the main thread which helps to develop more logical composition.
I hope these tools will certainly help you to automate your testing process easily. Feel free to drop us your queries.
