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Perusal Tech

• 26 Apr, 2021

APPIUM TESTING

WHAT IS APPIUM TESTING?

APPIUM is a freely distributed open-source test automation tool used for mobile application UI Testing Framework. Or in other words, it is an open-source automation mobile testing tool, which is used to test the application. It allows users to test several types of mobile applications such as Native, Hybrid and Mobile Web using standard WebDriver library and supports automation test on physical devices as well as an emulator or simulator both. It offers a “cross-platform tool” i.e. it allows you to write tests on multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Windows by using the same APIs.

Multiple devices can be easily tested by Appium in parallel. It is not dependent on mobile device OS as it has wrapper or Framework that translate Selenium Webdriver commands into UIAutomator (Android) or UIAutomation (iOS) commands depending on the device type, not any OS type. Previously, this tool mainly focused on IOS and Android applications that were limited to mobile application testing only. Few updates back, Appium declared that it would now support desktop application testing for windows as well. It is way more similar to the Selenium Webdriver testing tool. So, if you already know how to use Selenium Webdriver, Appium becomes very easy to learn. Appium supports all languages that have Selenium client libraries such as C#, Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript with node.js, Objective-C, Java, etc. By using Appium, you can also run automated tests on actual devices like mobile phones, tablets, etc. Selenium is known to be the backend of Appium that provides control over the functionality of Selenium for testing needs.

The demand for mobile applications is high, in today’s Development area. Currently, people are converting their websites into mobile apps. Therefore, it is very necessary to know about mobile software automation testing technology and also stay connected with new technology. Appium is a mobile application testing tool that is currently trending in Mobile Automation Testing Technology.

BASIC CONCEPTS OF APPIUM :

1. THE APPIUM DESKTOP : Appium provides the users with a graphical user interface wrapper that can be downloaded on various operating systems, such as, iOS, Windows and Android. You need to worry about nodes, as it comes as a complete package. When running tests, you can cheque out the hierarchy of your app, using the inspector that comes along with the package itself.

      2. THE APPIUM SERVER : When we download the Appium application, we basically download the server. The Appium Server has been programmed using Node js and implements Selenium WebDrive. It allows developers to the use of in-built WebDriver client for launching tests, following that, your mobile application starts acting like a web application, where the DOM is represented by View hierarchy.

3 APPIUM CLIENTS : Most of the programming languages have client libraries that support Appium’s extensions to access the WebDriver protocol like Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, and C#. You should use these client libraries instead of your regular WebDriver client while using Appium.

4 MAINTAINING SESSIONS : Automation can be scheduled the best in the context of a session. The clients have to initiate a session with the server in a specific way for each library, but they end up sending a POST session request to the server, instead, along with a JSON object known as the ‘desired capabilities’ object. In such cases, the server begins an automated session and responds with a session ID, which is used for transmitting further commands.

5 DESIRED CAPABILITIES : A set of keys and values are created using a map or a hashmap; these are known as Desired capabilities. They are transmitted to the server to create customised sessions according to the developers’ needs. There are also dynamic desired capabilities, which can modify the behaviour of the server while automated testing is going on. For instance, we might set the “platform-name” as iOS to create an iOS session, instead of Windows and Android.