An overview of Appium mobile testing framework, presented at the Selenium Israel Meetup (http://bit.ly/1yyY80D) on February 2014, by Daniel Puterman, Applitools Head Developer.

1. AN OVERVIEW
OF
Appium
Feb. 2014
Daniel Puterman (LinkedIn, twitter)
Sr. developer

2. whoami?
• Been programming forever.
• Currently lead developer at Applitools (check out our intro video).
• Before:
• Vioozer
• iCircl
• Matrix
• Beyond Security
• ….
• Team leader, Developer, Entreprenuer.

3. APPIUM AUTOMATES MOBILE APPS
“Appium is an open source test
automation framework for use with
native and hybrid mobile apps.”

4. A rising star..

5. DEMO
Code for the demo available in:
https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

6. Automating with Appium
Appium was created with 4 design goals in mind:
• Test the same app you submit to the market place.
• Write tests in any language, on any platform.
• Use standard automation specification / api.
• Open source.
Soooo… Ummmm……

7. WebDriver!

8. How does it work?
UIAutomator
Instruments
Test Code

9. Therefore…

10. ONE
SCRIPT
TO
RULE
THEM
ALL

11. No Proprietary IDE / Language

12. OPEN SOURCE
https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/LICENSE
APACHE LICENSE 2.0

13. Supported platforms
• Native & Hybrid apps
• Real devices & Simulators
• Available also on the grid (e.g., SauceLabs)
And….
• Even works with Robots

14. A little deeper: Android

15. A little deeper: iOS

16. Show me the code!
Code for available in:
https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

17. Finding elements
Appium translates webdriver “find” commands to the relevant
automation API provided by each platform:
Four “find” methods available
• “name”: The text on the element / accessibility identifier
• “tag_name”: the type of an element, e.g., “button”, “textfield” etc.
• Mapping:
https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/lib/devices/ios/uiauto/lib/mechanic.js
#L29
• “Xpath”: Using the element hierarchy.
• “ID”: Available for Android when running with “selendroid” as device.

18. Finding elements by name
driver.find_element(:name, “New note”)
Searches label text / accessibility fields for each platform (“contentDescription” on android, “name” on iOS)

19. Finding elements by tag name
driver.find_element(:tag_name, “textfield”)
Searches for an element of the specified type.

20. Finding elements by xpath
@driver.find_element(:xpath, '//text[contains(@value, “another”)]')
@driver.find_element(:xpath, '//text[last()]')

21. There are limitations, of course!
• Instruments is a singleton
• No parallel testing of iOS apps on the same OSX instance.
• Limited VM scalability.
• Appium is a relatively new product and is in the process of maturing.
• Documentation is not bad, but can be improved quite a bit.
• Error messages (especially for iOS) can be sometimes hard to figure
out.

22. The future
• Mobile Json Wire Protocol (part of
Selenium 3)
https://code.google.com/p/selenium/source/
browse/spec-draft.md?repo=mobile
• Joint effort of Appium, Facebook, Ebay and Mozilla
• Appium would implement the protocol + backword
compatibility.
• Additional platforms
• Appium Doctor
• Advanced gestures

23. Tips I: Appium setup
• Pay attention to the requirements!
• Node version (>= 0.8)
• Android API >= 17 (i.e. 4.2.2 and above)
• Windows is still considered beta, though seems to be working fine 
• iOS
• Mac OS X 10.7 or higher, 10.8.4 recommended
• XCode >= 4.6.3
• Apple Developer Tools (iPhone simulator SDK, command line tools)
• For Mac, make sure you use the XCode version matching the iOS
version you wish to test
• https://github.com/appium/appium/blob/master/docs/running-on-osx.md#testing-against-multiple-ios-sdks

24. Tips II: running Appium
• Desired capabilities, Desired capabilities, Desired capabilities!
• On linux/Mac use ‘sudo –E’ (or ‘sudo –sE’) to have the environment
variables available when Appium is run.
• Notice the IP you listen to when starting Appium (the ‘-a’ parameter):
• 127.0.0.1 will only listen to itself and localhost.
• 0.0.0.0 will listen to itself, localhost, 127.0.0.1 and the actual computer IP(s).
• Parallel testing?
• Run multiple Appium servers, each listening to a different port, and to a
specific device using the ‘–U’ option.
• Use ‘–full-reset’ when running on Android, so tests will start from a
clean environment.

25. FAQ
Q: Can I automate webview applications?
A: Definitely.
1. If you’re using Android, the “device” in the desired capabilities should be set to
“selendroid”.
2. Switch to webview: driver.switch_to_window(“WEBVIEW”)
3. Automate as standard web.
4. If required: driver.switch_to_window(“NATIVE”)
Q: What about an application which activates another application? (FB, maps etc.)
A: Depends
• For Android, not a problem.
• For iOS, switching to a different application loses the context in which the automation run.
You need to create a new session when coming back from the external application.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/appium-discuss/38wLkiS_7L0

26. FAQ Cont.
Q: Can I automate an application already installed on a device (without having the app file
on my computer)?
A: Yes and no 
• Android: You can, either for simulator or for real device (just set ‘app-package’ and ‘app-activity’).
• iOS: No problem if you use a simulator (use ‘bundleId’ as the value to the ‘app’ parameter), but for a
real device you must have the app file on your computer.

27. UI Validation
DEMO
Code for available in:
https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

28. Additional resources
• Appium website
• Home: http://appium.io/
• Documentation: http://appium.io/getting-started.html
• Appium forum on google. If you have a question or a problem, this is
the place to go.
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/appium-discuss
• Code for the demos
• https://github.com/danielputerman/appium-overview

29. Thanks!