Automating Complex Android App Interactions With Scripting And APIs

Android automation is the new trend in Android app development. This is because it has massively helped to reduce the complexity and functionality issues that the developers face while testing these apps.

So, by automating the Android test cases, the testers can save time, improve test accuracy, and streamline the entire workflow. With this article, we are going to understand various methods and tools that can help the testers to automate complex android app interactions. During our discussion, we will mainly focus on how the testers can achieve this process using scripting and APIs.

Need For Automation in Android Apps

The traditional practices of Android testing involve complete manual test instances. Manual testing is not only time consuming but is also sensitive to human errors. With the increasing complexity of modern mobile apps, the number of test cases and scenarios are also massively increasing. This increase makes it difficult for the testers to ensure comprehensive test coverage and consistent results with manual testing.

Benefits of Android Automation

By implementing Android automation in your test cases, you can achieve the following benefits:

• Using automation test scripts, the developers can execute the repetitive tasks quickly and consistently. This process will not only help improve the application testing accuracy but also help the testers to focus on other important areas of concern.

• Automated testing helps reduce the likelihood of errors that can arise due to increased human involvement in the testing cycle.

• By using Android automation, the application testers can cover more scenarios and test cases to ensure that they have at least one dedicated test instance to verify the functioning of all the app elements.

• The test scripts can be scaled to run on multiple devices and configurations simultaneously. By adopting this approach, the developers can massively boost the scalability of the test cycle.

Tools and Technologies for Automation

To implement Android automation, the application developers will have to rely on certain tools and technologies. To help the testers with this knowledge, we have mentioned some of the most important names in this list:

• UI Automator

UI Automator is a testing framework which is provided by Google. It allows the developers to write the test scripts for interacting with the user interface of Android applications. UI Automator also supports cross-app functional UI testing and can interact with visible elements present on the device.

• Appium

Appium is a well-known tool for automating Android app test cases. This tool provides a unified API to run the test cases on Android, iOS, and Windows apps. Using Appium, the developers can verify the functioning of native mobile apps, cross-platform mobile apps, and web-based mobile apps.

With Appium, the testers can create the test cases in any programming language like Java, Python, and JavaScript.

• Espresso

Espresso is yet another popular framework for Android testing, which is natively developed by Google. This framework is designed for writing reliable and concise user interface test cases. Espresso’s synchronization capabilities make it very easy for the testers to interact with the user interface elements of the app.

• Python and Scripting

Although the developers have a massive choice of programming languages for writing the automation test scripts, Python is the most commonly used language in this segment. This is due to its simplicity and rich set of plugin libraries. It also provides various convenient interfaces to interact with Android devices.

Setting Up The Environment

Before understanding the advanced details of Android automation, we must understand how the developers can set up the basic test environment. To shed more light over this segment, we have provided a step-by-step guide with all the necessary dependencies and tools:

• Installing Android Studio

Android Studio is the official integrated development environment for executing Android development. This studio includes an ADB, an Android emulator, and other essential tools. So, the developers have to download and install Android Studio from the official website. After this, you have to set up an Android Virtual Device for executing the test cases.

• Setting Up ADB

ADB is natively present within the Android SDK that comes with Android Studio. To ensure that the ADB is accessible from the command line, you must add the Android SDK ‘platform-tools’ directory to your system path.

We advise the developers to verify the installation of ADB by running ‘adb devices’ from the command line. This command should list any connected Android devices or emulators at that point in time.

• Installing Python and Required Libraries

To write the test cases with Python, you must ensure that Python is installed on your system. You can easily download and install Python from the official website. To perform the installation process along with the necessary libraries using pip, you simply have to enter the following command in the terminal window: 

Automating Tests With Appium

Using Appium, the testers can write comprehensive test cases for testing the Android apps. This tool also supports various programming languages and provides a robust API for interacting with the user interface.

To set up Appium for executing the test instances using its universal API, the app developers have to follow the mentioned steps in the intended chronological order:

• The first step is to install the Appium server on the test machine. To perform this process, the application testers only have to enter the following code snippet in the native terminal window:

npm install -g appium

• After this, the application developers have to initiate the Appium server using the ‘appium’ command.

• The last step in this process is to install Appium’s Python client on the test machine for interpreting the Python automation test instances. The developers can easily complete this process using the given command:

pip install Appium-Python-Client

• Writing  A Test Script With Appium

After setting up the Appium environment for executing Android automation, the developers have to write the test scripts for executing the test instances. To provide more clarity on this segment, we have mentioned a sample test script with Appium:

Advanced Appium Usage

While using Appium, the developers will have access to a massive range of functionalities. These functionalities will include gestures from context switching and much more. To help the developers with these advanced features, we have mentioned some of the most important ones on this list:

• Performance Gestures

Performance gestures allow the developers to understand how the application reacts to various forms of touch interactions that are the most common form of user interaction on modern Android devices.

The application testers can easily execute this process using Appium by entering the following code snippet in the terminal window:

• Context Switching

In case you are working on an Android application which uses WebView, you will have to switch contexts between native and web elements. By entering the following command in the terminal window of Appium, you can perform this process:

Integrating Automation with CI/CD

To utilize the full potential of Android automation, it is very important to integrate your test scripts with a continuous integration and continuous deployment pipeline. This approach will ensure that the test cases run automatically on each code change to provide quick feedback and also maintain the overall quality.

Using Jenkins for CI/CD

Jenkins is a well-known open-source automation server that is easily available in the present market. To set up Android automation with Jenkins, the application testers have to follow all the steps given below: 

• The first step is to install Jenkins from the official website. It is very important to download all the required files from official sources to avoid any possibilities of malicious attacks or data leaks.

• After this, the developers are required to install the necessary plugins, including ‘Android Emulator Plugin’ and ‘Pipeline.’ These plugins are crucial to properly execute the Android test cases with Jenkins and Appium.

• Now, the testers have to create a new pipeline job and configure the test repository with the build steps.

• The final step in this process is to configure the pipeline script by writing a ‘Jenkinsfile’ for defining the pipeline. We have mentioned a sample code snippet that will help the testers perform this process.

Using GitHub Actions

GitHub actions is a CI/CD service which is provided natively by GitHub. We have mentioned a sample code snippet that will allow the developers to set up a workflow for executing Android automation test scripts using GitHub actions:

The above code snippet will not only allow the testers to set up the test environment but will also help them to automatically add all the required dependencies for the test execution process.

Best Practices for Android Automation

Let us now go through some of the best practices that can help the developers and testers to further streamline the Android automation process while using scripts and APIs:

• It is very important to ensure that the test cases are maintainable and readable. So, the testers must break down the scripts into reusable functions and classes. It is also effective to name the variables, functions, and classes descriptively for improving readability. Finally, the testers should use comments and docstrings to document the court and explain the purpose of the code.

• We advise the testers to focus on improving the robustness and reliability of the test instances. For example, the testers can try handling exceptions using the try-except block. It is also effective to wait for elements using explicit waits so that the testers can ensure that all elements are available before interacting with them.

• You should always focus on implementing continuous improvement in the test scripts by updating the automation scripts to reflect the changes in the user interface. The testers should also keep track of test results and analyze failures for identifying and fixing issues promptly. It is also important to improve collaboration between team members to share knowledge and insights.

• We advise the developers to improve Android automation by including real devices through cloud device farms. LambdaTest is one such AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that can execute the test cases on more than 3000 different combinations of real devices, operating systems, and browser instances. The AI-orchestrated platform of LambdaTest massively helps in test data execution and management.

The Final Verdict

Based on our discussion, we can conclude that automating complex interactions with Android apps can massively enhance the development and testing processes. By using tools like UI Automator and Appium with programming languages like Python, the testers can create robust and efficient automation test scripts.

Moreover, by integrating these scripts with continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines, the testers can further ensure continuous quality and reliability. By following all the best practices that we discussed in this article and continually improving the automation strategy, the testers can achieve greater efficiency and accuracy in the Android app development cycle.