Table

of Contents
Introduction 1.1
Introduction to Mobile Test Automation 1.2
What is Appium 1.3
Appium 1.6.0 1.4
System Installation 1.5
Installing Android 1.5.1
Installing Appium via app 1.5.2
Installing App on Emulator 1.5.3
Install Appium via npm 1.5.4
Writing First Android Test 1.6
Java - Gradle Project 1.6.1
Understanding Desired Capabilities 1.6.2
Desired Capabilities for Android 1.6.3
Exploring UiAutomatorViewer 1.7
Exploring Appium Inspector 1.8
Remote Debugging on Android via Chrome 1.9
Starting Appium Server 1.10
Executing Test on Real Devices 1.11
Working with Genymotion Emulator 1.12
Automating Gestures 1.13
Tips (With Code Snippets) 1.14
Running multiple Appium Server for parallel execution 1.15
References 1.16

2
Introduction

Introduction
Appium is an Open Source tool for testing native or hybrid mobile apps. It uses WebDriver
JSON Wire protocol to drive both iOS and Android apps.

Why this book ?

There is a decent documentation on the Appium site but somewhere it lacked to produce a
step by step guide, which would help you get rolling from scratch. There are bits and pieces
which are fairly technical in nature and dev centric.

This book is an effort in the direction of consolidating all the knowledge and resources
around appium. It will help software developers and testers successfully use Appium to
automate the Android application.

This book will take you through the journey of understanding appium. It would also help you
understand how the different pieces come together to build a test automation framework for
Android App testing.

Book also contains lot of code snippets which will help you in your daily automation
stuff to get you started with Appium and Java.

What I will learn from this book ?

By the end of this book, you would be knowing

How to install and set up Appium

How to configure device or Emulator via Desired Capabilities
How to write your first appium test in Java
How to find locators using UIAutomatorViewer and Appium Inspector
How to debug hybrid android app via Chrome browser
How to execute appium test on real Android devices
How to automate gestures like tap, touch etc...
How to run multiple appium server for parallel execution
How to run appium test on GenyMotion Emulator

This book also contains a git link to an android project which could be ported for any other
android application automation with basic alteration.

3
Introduction

This is a java project which has been created using IntelliJ IDea Community Edition. POM
File manages the dependency of Selenium. Project is using TestNG annotation. We have
also bundled the respective android mobile application under the apps folder for ease.

Want us to help you with Mobile Test

Automation
At TestVagrant, we help Startups with building robust test automation solution be it Mobile,
Web or Services. The core idea behind TestVagrant is to bring an

affordable,
niche
rapid

solution to startups and enterprise.

Please visit TestVagrant site to request for free POC.

Queries regarding Appium

In case of any doubts and clarifications about Appium feel free to reach out to
[email protected]

Happy Reading!!!

4
Introduction to Mobile Test Automation

Introduction to Mobile Test Automation

Before the mobile application development boom, we have explored and tried every bit of
web application testing and kind of conquered that space. Wondering what makes mobile
app test automation challenging?

Couple of things, which I would want to highlight here:

Never ending screen size and form factors

Apps hosted in a sandboxed environment and very limited inter process communication
Network Challenges
Usability aspect of mobile and the complexity in terms of navigation
Lack of easy to use API

While in this book we are not going to discuss all of these but look into one aspect of the
challenge which is "lack of easy to use api". Appium is very popular because of api's which
are similar to that of Selenium.

All the instructions mentioned here after are tested on Mac OSX version (10.10).

5
What is Appium

What is Appium
Appium is an open source test automation tool for mobile applications. It allows you to test
all the three types of mobile applications: native, hybrid and mobile web.

It also allows you to run the automated tests on actual devices, emulators and simulators.

Today when every mobile app is made in at least two platform iOS and Android, you for sure
need a tool, which allows testing cross platform. Having two different frameworks for the
same app increases the cost of the product and time to maintain it as well.

The basic philosophy of Appium is that you should be able to reuse code between iOS and
Android, and thats why when you see the API they are same across iOS and android.
Another important thing to highlight here is that unlike Calabash, Appium doesnt modify
your app or need you to even recompile the app.

Appium lets you choose the language you want to write your test in. It doesnt dictate the
language or framework to be used.

Architecture
So how does Appium do all this? Lets try to understand what happens behind the scenes.

When you download the Appium app you are basically downloading the server. The server is
written in Node.js and implements the Selenium WebDriver. It allows one to use available
WebDriver client to fire your tests. And then your mobile app acts precisely like a web app
where the DOM is represented by View hierarchy.

So this server basically exposes REST api which performs the following actions:

1) Receives connection from client

2) Listen command
3) Execute command
4) Respond back the command execution status

In terms of architecture diagram, below is how Appium can be explained.

6
What is Appium

7
Appium 1.6.0

What is new in Appium 1.6.0

What's new in Appium 1.6 ?

UiAutomator 2
With release of appium 1.6.0 , appium has started using UiAutomator 2

Till now appium was primarily dependent on Google's UiAutomator framework as the
primary way of automating native Android apps.

To use UiAutomator 2, you can specify

automationName: uiautomator2

in your desired capabilities and try out the new driver.

Prerequisites: This module should support from Android 5.0 (API Level 20) and above

For more info, check out the wiki article here: https://github.com/appium/appium-
uiautomator2-server/wiki

XCUITest
Appium has added support for Apple's new XCUITest framework. When you specify a
platformVersion of 10 or higher in Capabilities Builder, Appium automatically uses the
XCUITest automation backend.

If you want to run your iOS test on version 9.3, then you need to specify

automationName: XCUITest

in your desired capabilities.

8
System Installation

Installing Appium
Continuing from the last chapter, which was more to explain what Appium is about and the
explanation of architecture. This chapter will detail how to write your first test and execute
that.

Before installing Appium, you need to get few other things in ecosystem:

Android SDK
Install Appium
IDE of your choice (Eclipse or IntelliJ IDea)

I am assuming that JDK installation is already there and you have the latest version of java
installed.

9
Installing Android

Installing Android

Android Requirements
Android SDK API >= 17 (Additional features require 18/19)
Appium supports Android on OS X, Linux and Windows.

Android SDK needs to be downloaded from the following location.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Once you download the file and unzip, you would see the below structure in the sdk folder.

Post unzipping, update the system variable to include sdk as well. For mac users below are
the command snapshot (change the path and folder name accordingly as per your machine)

export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/Steve/Development/SDK
export PATH =${PATH}:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools

Once this is done, we need to launch the SDK manager to download relevant files to create
an emulator and run the virtual device. In terminal, type in

android sdk

This would open the SDK manager for you to download the relevant files. In the SDK
manager select the below files as shown below. This will help you create a virtual device
running Android 4.4.2.

10
Installing Android

Select the above files and choose to install, once done close the SDK manager. In terminal
then type

android avd

This would open the Android Virtual Device Manager, which would help you create the
virtual devices. Click on Create on the pop up opened and follow the below snapshot for the
values. Select the RAM size as per your machine configuration.

11
Installing Android

Once you have selected the above options, click on OK. Once done, it will show up in the
AVD manager as below.

Select the AVD name and click on Start on the right. This would launch the pop up with few
options, you may choose as you want.

"Wipe user data" would wipe any previous app installation you have done and would launch
a plain vanilla emulator.

Once done click on Launch, this will launch the emulator.

You can use the command adb devices to see if the adb is detecting the emulator. This
basically completes the android SDK installation part.

12
Installing Android

13
Installing Appium via app

Installing Appium
Download the Appium installer from the below mentioned location. Once done extract it and
install the app.

https://github.com/appium/appium/releases

You can select the Android icon from the top and click on Launch.

Once the Appium server is running you will see some logs in the app screen or alternately
hit the below url to check the status.

http://localhost:4723/wd/hub/status

Appium can also be run via npm install. For this you would need node.js and npm version
(0.10 or greater). In order to verify if the appium is installed correctly and it's dependencies
run the command

appium-doctor

This command can be supplied with flag --android to verify all the dependencies are set up
properly.

The appium clients are simple extension to the WebDriver client.

14
Installing Appium via app

15
Installing App on Emulator

Installing App on Emulator

Once your emulator is ready and you have the android path set up properly, the next action
would be to install an app on the Emulator which would become your application under test.

The first step is to run the emulator on which you want to install the app.

emulator -avd <AVD_Name>

This would launch the emulator and the command would be running in the terminal.

Launch another window in the terminal and run the following steps.

Download the apk and put it in android_sdk/tools folder

Navigate to platform-tools folder
Run the following command

adb install < path_to_apk_file>

16
Install Appium via npm

Install Appium via Source

One of the alternative way to install Appium is to install via npm (Node JS Package
Manager).

But before that you need to have below items installed

npm (version .10 or greater)

node.js

Brew will be very handy here to install the above stuff. It's an amazing package manager for
OS X and installing packages and updating it will be breeze once you install brew.

Once the node.js and npm are installed, you can use the below command to check if all the
appium dependencies are met, run the below command:

appium-doctor

It would show up a result like this if everything is okay:

Once done run the below command to install the appium:

npm install -g appium

Once this is done, start the appium server by the following command:

appium &

17
Install Appium via npm

18
Writing First Android Test

Write your first Android Test

We are using IntelliJ Idea 13 CE for this example.

Create a new maven project and update the pom file with below mentioned Selenium
dependency. I am assuming you are familiar with Java project creation in Eclipse or IntelliJ.
Let me include a brief step by step guide to create a project.

Creating a Maven Project:

You can choose to create a Maven project in IntelliJ IDEA. This is the recommended way
when using the Community Edition.

Select New Project

In the New Project window, select Maven on the left side of the screen as shown
below. If the SDK is already defined in IntelliJ then it will pick up from there, else click
New and select the installation folder of the desired JDK.

Click Next
Give a Maven GroupID, ArtifactID, and a Version for the project, or use the defaults.

19
Writing First Android Test

Click Next
Enter Project name AppiumDemo" and Project Location Your Desired Location"
Click on Finish.

Once the project is created, copy the below dependencies in the pom.xml file.

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
<artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
<version>2.46.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.testng</groupId>
<artifactId>testng</artifactId>
<version>6.1.1</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.appium</groupId>
<artifactId>java-client</artifactId>
<version>3.0.0</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

20
Writing First Android Test

Once the project is created, created folder called apps and put the .apk file there which is
your application under test.

Under the test folder, create a folder called "java", and create two sub folders

pages
scenarios

Sp basically your solution would look like below:

Creating the Appium Set up

Add a Java Class file under scenarios folder and name it AndroidSetup. Add the below
content to the class file.

protected AndroidDriver driver;

protected void prepareAndroidForAppium() throws MalformedURLException {

File appDir = new File("/Users/nishant/Development/AppiumDemo/apps");
File app = new File(appDir, "Flipkart.3.0.apk");
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("device","Android");

//mandatory capabilities
capabilities.setCapability("deviceName","Android");
capabilities.setCapability("platformName","Android");

//other caps
capabilities.setCapability("app", app.getAbsolutePath());
driver = new AndroidDriver(new URL("http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub"), capabilit
ies);
}

21
Writing First Android Test

What do these steps do ?

installs the apk file (application) on the connected device,
start the application
inform the appium server which kind of session we are interested in (via Desired
Capabilities)
give you the driver object which is of AndroidDriver type

Once you get the driver, from there on it's more like the Selenium usage of the appium driver
and familiar method calls.

What next from here?

The next logical step from here is to create Page class files for different pages in the app
and then create an according test class file. However to test the code just written, you can
write a small piece of code as below:

@Test
public void helloTest()
{
String app_package_name = "com.flipkart.android:id/";
By userId = By.id(app_package_name + "user_id");
By password = By.id(app_package_name + "user_password");
By showPassword = By.id(app_package_name + "show_password");
By login_Button = By.id(app_package_name + "btn_login");

driver.findElement(userId).sendKeys("[email protected]");
driver.findElement(password).sendKeys("testvagrant123");
driver.findElement(showPassword).click();
driver.findElement(login_Button).click();
}

I am sure you would have question that why we are using "app_package_name", which is
explained in the chapter "Exploring UiAutomatorViewer".

Post this set up method you can write your normal automation test (Selenium types).
Sample code would look like:

driver.findElement(userId).sendKeys([email protected]);
driver.findElement(password).sendKeys(password);
driver.findElement(showPassword).click();
driver.findElement(login_Button).click();

We have created a project in github to help you with the basic framework setup using
Appium. Below is the github link.

22
Writing First Android Test

https://github.com/testvagrant/AppiumDemo

The above project uses Flipkart android application, which is bundled along with and is
present in the "apps" folder. The code is tested on this version of Flipkart app and works well
to show the concepts.

In the coming chapters we will understand Desired Capabilities in much details.

23
Java - Gradle Project

Cucumber-JVM-Appium - Gradle Project

Creating Gradle Project
You can choose to create a gradle project. Below steps will guide you for the same.

Select New Project

In the New Project window, select Gradle on the left side of the screen as shown below.
If the SDK is already defined in IntelliJ then it will pick up from there, else click New and
select the installation folder of the desired JDK.

Click Next
Give a GroupID, ArtifactID, and a Version for the project. Click Next.

24
Java - Gradle Project

Select the option of "Use auto-import" and "Create directories for empty content...".
Click Next

25
Java - Gradle Project

Lastly enter a project name and project location and click on Finish.

26
Java - Gradle Project

It should create a project with following structure.

Adding dependencies to build.gradle

27
Java - Gradle Project

Open build.gradle file and copy the below two lines

compile 'io.appium:java-client:4.0.0'

```testCompile 'info.cukes:cucumber-java:1.2.4',
'info.cukes:cucumber-junit:1.2.4'

Adding app folder

Once the project is created, created folder called apps and put the .apk file there which is
your application under test.

28
Understanding Desired Capabilities

Understanding Desired Capabilities

Before we start writing further test code to automate and do other stuff, we need to
understand why we are using Desired Capabilities.

Desired Capabilities are present in the below library and hence it needs to be imported.

org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities

Desired Capabilities is a way of telling the Appium Server which kind of session we are
interested in. So it's a hash of Key and Value to let us have more control on the server
during automation. So some of the key info which we will be using are :

automationName Which automation engine to use Appium (default) or Selendroid

platformName Which mobile OS platform to use iOS, Android, or FirefoxOS

Similarly, we can specify platformVersion which will be the version of OS running on the
device, could be "8.3" or "5.1".

Below is one such table which contains the various Desired Capabilities which would be set
at the server level and customized to either Android or iOS.

Capability Description Values

Appium (default) or
automationName Which automation engine to use
Selendroid

Which mobile OS platform to iOS, Android, or

platformName
use FirefoxOS
platformVersion Mobile OS version e.g., 7.1, 4.4

iPhone Simulator, iPad

The kind of mobile device or Simulator, iPhone Retina
deviceName
emulator to use 4-inch, Android Emulator,
Galaxy S4, etc
The absolute local path or
remote http URL to an .ipa or
.apk file, or a .zip containing one
of these. Appium will attempt to
install this app binary on the
appropriate device first. Note
/abs/path/to/my.apk or
app that this capability is not
http://myapp.com/app.ipa
required for Android if you
specify appPackage and

29
Understanding Desired Capabilities

appActivity capabilities (see

below). Incompatible with
browserName.
Name of mobile web browser to
Safari for iOS and
automate. Should be an empty
browserName Chrome, Chromium, or
string if automating an app
Browser for Android
instead.
How long (in seconds) Appium
will wait for a new command
newCommandTimeout from the client before assuming e.g. 60
the client quit and ending the
session

Whether to have Appium install

autoLaunch and launch the app true, false
automatically. Default true
(Sim/Emu-only) Language to set
language e.g. fr
for the iOS Simulator
(Sim/Emu-only) Locale to set for
locale e.g. fr_CA
the iOS Simulator
Unique device identifier of the
udid e.g. 1ae203187fc012g
connected physical device
(Sim/Emu-only) start in a certain LANDSCAPE or
orientation
orientation PORTRAIT
Move directly into Webview
autoWebview true, false
context. Default false

30
Desired Capabilities for Android

Desired Capabilities for Android

Since Appium caters to both Android and iOS, there are different set of desired capabilities
for Android and iOS.

This section will list all the desired capabilities associated with Android. Majority of them are
optional but you can choose to use them as it suits your needs.

Capability Description

Activity name for the Android activity

appActivity you want to launch from your MainActivity, .Settings
package
Java package of the Android app
appPackage com.example.android.my
you want to run
Activity name for the Android activity
appWaitActivity SplashActivity
you want to wait for
Java package of the Android app
appWaitPackage com.example.android.my
you want to wait for
Timeout in seconds while waiting for
deviceReadyTimeout 5
device to become ready
Fully qualified instrumentation class.
androidCoverage Passed to -w in adb shell am com.my.Pkg/com.my.Pkg
instrument -e coverage true -w
(Chrome and webview only) Enable
enablePerformanceLogging Chromedrivers performance logging true, false
(default false)
Timeout in seconds used to wait for
androidDeviceReadyTimeout a device to become ready after e.g., 30
booting

Devtools socket name. Needed only

when tested app is a Chromium
embedding browser. The socket is
androidDeviceSocket e.g., chrome_devtools_re
open by the browser and
Chromedriver connects to it as a
devtools client.
avd Name of avd to launch e.g., api19

How long to wait in milliseconds for

avdLaunchTimeout an avd to launch and connect to 300000
ADB (default 120000)
How long to wait in milliseconds for

31
Desired Capabilities for Android

avdReadyTimeout an avd to finish its boot animations 300000

(default 120000)
Additional emulator arguments used
avdArgs e.g., -netfast
when launching an avd
Use a custom keystore to sign apks,
useKeystore true or false
default false

Path to custom keystore, default

keystorePath e.g., /path/to.keystore
~/.android/debug.keystore
keystorePassword Password for custom keystore e.g., foo
keyAlias Alias for key e.g., androiddebugkey
keyPassword Password for key e.g., foo
The absolute local path to webdriver
executable (if Chromium embedder
chromedriverExecutable provides its own webdriver, it should /abs/path/to/webdriver
be used instead of original
chromedriver bundled with Appium)
Custom arguments passed directly
to chromedriver in chromeOptions
e.g., {'androidDeviceSock
specialChromedriverSessionArgs capability. Passed as object which
'opera_beta_devtools_rem
properties depend on a specific
webdriver.
Amount of time to wait for Webview
autoWebviewTimeout context to become active, in ms. e.g. 4
Defaults to 2000
Intent action which will be used to
intentAction start activity (default e.g.android.intent.action.M
android.intent.action.MAIN)

Intent category which will be used to

e.g. android.intent.catego
intentCategory start activity (default
android.intent.category.A
android.intent.category.LAUNCHER)
Flags that will be used to start
intentFlags e.g. 0x10200000
activity (default 0x10200000)

Additional intent arguments that will

optionalIntentArguments be used to start activity. See Intent e.g. --esn , --ez
arguments
unicodeKeyboard Enable Unicode input, default false true or false

Reset keyboard to its original state,

after running Unicode tests with
resetKeyboard true or false
unicodeKeyboard capability. Ignored
if used alone. Default false

32
Desired Capabilities for Android

If you notice above some of the capabilities like appWaitActivity , avd,

androidDeviceReadyTimeout are very handy and would be recommended to make use of in
your automation suite.

33
Exploring UiAutomatorViewer

How to get locators via

UiAutomatorViewer
UIAutomatorviewer comes packaged with Android sdk and is present under tools folder.
Its a tool, which lets you inspect the UI of an application in order to find the layout hierarchy,
and view the properties associated with the controls.

While designing your UI automation suite, this tool is very helpful as it exposes the Id and
other attributes of an element, which is needed for writing scripts.

Once the android sdk path is set on the machine, open the terminal and type

uiautomatorviewer

and this would launch the UI inspection tool. Below is how the tool looks like when no app is
monitored.

Clicking on the devices icon from left takes a dump of UI XML snapshot of the screen
opened in the device. So you will be presented with an intermediate screen like this:

34
Exploring UiAutomatorViewer

Once it finishes loading, this is how the tool looks like; we have highlighted the logo of
Flipkart and the respective attribute details of the logo.

The left side of the tool shows how the device looks like and the right side is divided in two
parts:

Upper half to show the UI XML snapshot and the nodes structure
Lower half shows the details of the node selected with all the attributes.

35
Exploring UiAutomatorViewer

So if you carefully look below, you would see the resource-id, which roughly translates to id
of the HTML. And then there are other details like what is the class name, package it
belongs to, whether it is enabled, whether it is selected etc.

Apart from this all the UI elements on the left can be clicked upon and the right side changes
dynamically to show the details of the element selected.

This detail pretty much about the UIAutomatorviewer.

36
Exploring Appium Inspector

How to get locators via Appium Inspector

In the previous chapter we saw UiAutomatorViewer which comes bundled with Android
SDK. Appium has built something like that which makes our work of finding locators very
easy.

When you start the Appium app, you would notice the icons at the top (image below), I have
highlighted the Apppium Inspector in red.

So if you notice that the appium server is running and the log shows that it's connected to
the emulator running locally.

When you click on the circled icon (Appium Inspector), it will launch a new UI as shown
below with the application UI state captured.

37
Exploring Appium Inspector

The panel on the extreme right is clickable and you can click on the element you want to find
details about. So if you see the panel with title "Details", there are bunch of attributes listed
for the highlighted element.

If you notice the attribute "resource-id", it's made of the package name
"com.flipkart.android" and the value of id attribute.

This package name is present for all the elements and hence we can externalize it. So to
construct an element identifier for automation, we are going to use it as shown below:

String app_package_name = "com.flipkart.android:id/";

By userId = By.id(app_package_name + "user_id");

38
Exploring Appium Inspector

So the code would look like:

driver.findElement(userId).sendKeys("[email protected]");

Also you can use other options like xpath, index etc. Below is the snapshot of all the options
you have for identifying the element.

39
Remote Debugging on Android via Chrome

How to debug hybrid android app via

Chrome browser
In the previous chapter we saw UIAutomatorviewer and how to use that tool to look for
elements and locators.

However, when you are working on a hybrid application (developed on a platform like
Phonegap ), we can use remote debugging.

To use Remote debugging, we need to have:

Chrome (version 32) or later installed on your machine

Android Device
Should be running Android 4.4+
USB Debugging enabled
USB cable

Once the basic things are in place, connect your device to machine using USB cable.
Launch Chrome and open a tab with target "chrome://inspect". This is how it would look like.

If you notice your phone, you would have got an alert saying "Allow USB Debugging".

40
Remote Debugging on Android via Chrome

Once you click OK, your device would get showed up in browser tab. Below is how it would
show up:

41
Remote Debugging on Android via Chrome

Once you click on inspect, you can see the locators as you have always done in web for
Selenium.

You can also use Screen casting option by clicking the Screencast icon in the upper right
corner of your remote debugging DevTools window.

This method of finding locator is faster than using

UIAutomatorviewer and would be highly recommended.

42
Starting Appium Server

How to start appium server via Java code

Appium has recently made some changes and now you can actually write a couple line of
code and start appium server.

Appium has introduced a class called AppiumDriverLocalService which will help you do
this. There are two ways you can write code:

1. If you have appium installed via npm then try the below lines of code.

service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildDefaultService();
service.start();

For stopping the appium server use:

service.stop();

2. If you don't have appium installed via npm then try the below lines of code. For your
local machine you might want to change the path accordingly. In the below example, I
am showing if the OS is mac then use the installed Appium to start the server. If the OS
is windows use the npm installed appium. This is just for the demonstration, ideally you
should have common strategy whether it is Mac or Windows.

String osName = System.getProperty("os.name");

43
Starting Appium Server

if (osName.contains("Mac")) {
service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(new AppiumServiceBuilder()
.usingDriverExecutable(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Re
sources/node/bin/node"))
.withAppiumJS(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resources/n
ode_modules/appium/bin/appium.js"))
.withIPAddress("127.0.0.1")
.usingPort(port)
.withLogFile(new File("target/"+deviceUnderExecution+".log")));
}
else if (osName.contains("Windows")) {
service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(new AppiumServiceBuilder()
.usingPort(port)
.withLogFile(new File("target/"+deviceUnderExecution+".log")));
}
else {
Assert.fail("Unspecified OS found, Appium can't run");
}

System.out.println("- - - - - - - - Starting Appium Server- - - - - - - - ");

service.start();

In the code above, I have the port as parameter for parallel runs on device.

44
Executing Test on Real Devices

How to execute test on real android

devices
This chapter would help you understand how to execute the test on real Android Devices,
after all the biggest advantage of Appium is that you can run the same test on local devices.

For test to run on devices, we need to make sure :

USB Debugging is enabled

ADB lists your devices into the connected devices
Changing the Desired capability as per the hardware

Enabling USB Debugging:

By default, Android devices do not have USB Debugging enabled, these are under
Developer Options. To turn them on,

Navigate to Settings app on phone

Scroll down and click on the Developer Options
Turn on the Developer Options and click the USB Debugging.

On the pop up (shown below), click on Ok.

45
Executing Test on Real Devices

Some devices do not have Developer Options and hence the way to enable Debugging
mode is to launch the Settings screen. Once done, tap About Phone" and then scroll to the
bottom and tap on "Build Number" 7 times (Yes 7 times)!

Once done, you will now be able to enable/disable it whenever you desire by going to

Settings -> Developer Options -> Debugging -> USB debugging

Once the above set ups are done, launch Terminal (or Command Prompt) and type in

adb devices

On a happy path, it would show the below result.

There are times when even after starting USB mode on your device, adb wouldnt list the
device here. To fix that, below are some of the steps you need to follow:

Open the USB manager on your laptop.

Use the vendor id (highlighted in blue below) and update in the adb_usb.ini file.
Steps for MAC OS X to open the USB Manager:
Click on the Apple icon on top left of the screen
Click on About This Mac
On the pop up, click on the System Report
Under Hardware section, click on USB
You would notice the device connected there, click on the device.

46
Executing Test on Real Devices

Once you have copied the vendor ID, we need to update the file below using the following
command:

vim ~/.android/adb_usb.ini

This is how a sample file would look like after updating the Vendor ID.

47
Executing Test on Real Devices

Once the above changes are done, run the following commands:

adb kill-server
adb start-server
adb devices

This would finally show up the devices as connected. Once the device shows up as online,
we are good to run the test.

Start the Appium and in that launch the Android Server.

In case you have any android version mentioned in your code, you can remove it and have
only the one, which are mandatory. Below is a sample snippet I have used and works
flawlessly.

File appDir = new File(/Users/Steve/Development/SampleApps);

File app = new File(appDir, Flipkart.apk);
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(device,Android);
//mandatory capabilities
capabilities.setCapability(deviceName,Android);
capabilities.setCapability(platformName,Android);
capabilities.setCapability("udid", Properties.udid);

//other caps
capabilities.setCapability(app, app.getAbsolutePath());
driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL(http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub), capabilities);

48
Working with Genymotion Emulator

How to run appium test on GenyMotion

Emulator

Introduction
A Genymotion emulator is a virtual device which runs on your system and like a typical
android emulator. It's an emulator based on Virtualbox. It can emulate a bunch of android
devices and support a wide variety of API levels. Since the Virtualbox is cross platform
compatible, it allows Genymotion to be used on any platform be it windows, Linux, Mac.
Genymotion allows you to create custom device image as well as standard device image
which is easy to download and get started. Its an emulator using x86 architecture
virtualization, making it much more efficient.

Some of the features of Genymotion which stands out are:

Networking: emulates WiFi connection

GPS: allows coordinate configuration
Battery: allows configuring battery levels
Display: full screen display
Genymotion shell which allows you to interact with your VM using a command line.
Performance: very fast compared to android emulator

Genymotion has a free version and license one as well. Even in free version you will see a
wide range of devices supported and the android version. Download and install the
Genymotion app. Once done you should be able to log in with your registered credentials
and launch the Genymotion app. This will open up a window shown below and give you
option to choose device or android version.

49
Working with Genymotion Emulator

List of Device Image available

List of Android Version supported

50
Working with Genymotion Emulator

Once you download the required device image, if the app depends on Google Play, you
need to do 2 things:

install one apk "com.android.vending-x.x.xx.apk"

Flash it with "gapps-lp-YYYYMMDD-signed"

Running appium test on Genymotion emulator

To execute test on Genymotion emulator, you need to pass the emulator udid to the device
config file. When you run "adb devices" command it will show you the udid of the running
emulator. It would be typically like "192.168.57.101:5555". You need to pass this value
against the udid in the device config file. This is not mandatory if you are running just one
instance of emulator and appium server. But if you are attempting parallel run it will make
sense to specify udid and bind it with one of the appium server.

51
Automating Gestures

How to automate gestures

Gestures play an important role in how your app is being used. With lot of unique gesture
supported on mobile devices, automation has its own challenge. Some of the common
gestures are:

single tap
double tap
flick (left or right)
pull down to refresh
long press

Appium handles these gestures using TouchActions api they have created. Its more like
Actions class in Selenium. Apart from that they have also enabled JSON wire protocol
server extensions.

We can pass in coordinates as parameters and specify the action we want. Sample code
would look like as:

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;

HashMap<String, Double> swipeObject = new HashMap<String, Double>();
swipeObject.put(startX, 0.01);
swipeObject.put(startY, 0.5);
swipeObject.put(endX, 0.9);
swipeObject.put(endY, 0.6);
swipeObject.put(duration, 3.0);
js.executeScript(mobile: swipe, swipeObject);

When we enter the coordinates in decimal, it actually specifies the percentage. So in above
example it means, 1% from x and 50% from y coordinates. Duration basically specifies how
long it will tap and is in seconds.

Some of the mobile methods to be used are:

mobile: tap
mobile: flick
mobile: swipe
mobile: scroll
mobile: shake

Prefix mobile: allows us to route these requests to the appropriate endpoint.

52
Automating Gestures

You might also want to explore TouchActions class provided by Selenium. It implements
actions for touch devices and basically built upon the Actions class.

We have added some test in the git project to show how to use the gestures in automation.

The project would help you learn how to automate android app using Appium.

Appium let's you do a scroll to the element text but sometimes it might not work depending
on how app is and CSS structure are. You can write your own parallel code to perform scroll
and here is the code snippet for the same.

JavascriptExecutor js = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;

HashMap<String, String> scrollObject = new HashMap<String, String>();
scrollObject.put("direction", "down");
js.executeScript("mobile: scroll", scrollObject);

53
Tips (With Code Snippets)

Tips (With Code Snippets)

Appium is pretty evolving and hence there are lot of new things it supports and hence this
book needs constant update. Here in this chapter, I intend to share some appium code
snippets which is not necessarily explained as a separate chapter.

* Changing context while testing an app

Most of the time when you are testing an app, you will find that there is a specific page in
app which is a Webview and your normal code is not working. So in those situations we
need to change the application context to "WEBVIEW" or "NATIVE" accordingly. Below is a
code snippet will do the same and change the context to Webview.

public static void changeDriverContextToWeb(AppiumDriver driver) {

Set<String> contextNames = driver.getContextHandles();
for (String contextName : contextNames) {
if (contextName.contains("WEBVIEW"))
DriverFactory.driver.context(contextName);
}
}

A similar code can be used with Native as parameter to change the context to Native app.

public static void changeDriverContextToNative(AppiumDriver driver) {

Set<String> contextNames = driver.getContextHandles();
for (String contextName : contextNames) {
if (contextName.contains("NATIVE"))
DriverFactory.driver.context(contextName);
}
}

* Starting Appium Server via code

Generally when you write an automation script you should try to write a code which runs in
an un-attended mode. Starting Appium Server and killing it when the test is run is one thing
which we should be handling with in the framework. Below code snippet will help you do the
same. So if you notice the below code, we are using the installed appium to start the server
and then the "port" on which we start is parameterized. Also we are generating an appium
log file so as to capture the appium log which is again parameterized based on the device
under execution.

54
Tips (With Code Snippets)

service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(new AppiumServiceBuilder()

.usingDriverExecutable(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents
/Resources/node/bin/node"))
.withAppiumJS(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resource
s/node_modules/appium/bin/appium.js"))
.withIPAddress("127.0.0.1")
.usingPort(port)
.withLogFile(new File("target/"+deviceUnderExecution+".log")));

55
Running multiple Appium Server for parallel execution

Running multiple Appium Server for

parallel execution
In the journey of mobile automation it would eventually happen that you will have substantial
scenarios automated. Also the desire to have faster feedback would push the need for
running test in parallel.

So how do you run the test in parallel ? One of the approach I would suggest here is to have
multiple appium server running. Steps to do it:

Connect couple of android devices to the system

Run the below command and note down the device id.
adb devices

Run the below command and replace the udid with actual device udid and port with
values from (4723)
appium -U udid -p port

For second device update the udid and increment the port value by 10

Appium gives a way to do the same via code by giving AppiumServiceBuilder class. Below is
a sample code which takes input param as port and udid. In Appium 1.5.3 release they have
move the udid to GeneralServerFlag as Robot_Address.
def service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(new AppiumServiceBuilder()
.usingDriverExecutable(new
File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resources/node/bin/node")) .withAppiumJS(new
File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resources/node_modules/appium/bin/appium.js"))
.withIPAddress("127.0.0.1") .usingPort(port as int)
.withArgument(GeneralServerFlag.ROBOT_ADDRESS, udid as String)
.withArgument(AndroidServerFlag.BOOTSTRAP_PORT_NUMBER, ((port as int) + 2) as String)
.withArgument(SESSION_OVERRIDE) .withLogFile(new File("build/${device}.log")));

So the above command helps you create the appium service which then you can start as

service.start

The next work would be to create a mapping of tag and the devices on which you want to
run the test. This could be done via a properties file.

56
References

References
Official Site & Tutorials
http://appium.io/
https://docs.saucelabs.com/tutorials/appium/
Android SDK
https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html?hl=i
Github Project Link
https://github.com/appium/appium
https://github.com/testvagrant/AppiumDemo
Resources
http://testvagrant.com/#!blogs/c152q
Appium Discussion Group
https://discuss.appium.io/
Selenium
https://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/JsonWireProtocol
http://www.seleniumhq.org/
UI Automation Documentation
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/DeveloperTools/Reference/UI
AutomationRef/_index.html
UI Testing Android *http://developer.android.com/tools/testing/testing_ui.html

57