This document discusses using the ios-driver tool with Selenium to automate testing of iOS applications. It describes how ios-driver works by exposing the iOS element tree through the WebDriver API and allowing tests to be written using existing Selenium infrastructure and languages. It also covers testing hybrid, web, and localizing applications and discusses integrating the tools into a continuous integration pipeline using Jenkins. Future plans include adding support for running ios-driver nodes on non-Mac platforms and improvements to the inspector.

1. ios-driver
Using Selenium to automate your iOS applications

2. Introduction
• Technical Test Lead at Paddypower
• graham.abell@paddypower.com
• https://github.com/nicegraham
• Twitter: @nicegraham
• The Technical Test Team
• SET – test frameworks, tools and mocking services
• Performance Testing
• Manage QA environments
• Involved with several OSS projects

3. Testing mobile solutions
• The Problem - Several iOS applications in production, more on the way
• Objective-C
• Sencha
• Hybrid
• Pure web apps
• The Solution - Add automated functional testing to our CI process for mobile

4. Our wishlist

5. Apple’s Instruments framework
• Instruments is Apple’s iOS automation framework
• It uses the UIAutomation JS library to interact with applications
• The good
• Decent interface for running tests
• The JS UI Automation library is extensive, well documented
• Tight integration to Xcode
• Does the heavy lifting of interacting with an application
• The not so good
• Tied to a mac for running / debugging tests
• No abstraction layer to run tests
• Doesn’t scale
• Browsing the Element Tree [DOM] is not fun

6. Our wishlist

7. Why Selenium?
• Clean Design
• Supports any language or framework
• Stable API
• Well on it’s way to becoming a w3c standard
• Already part of our framework
• Minimum rework to add support for ios
• The team are used to working with it
• BDD used – QAs and BAs create automated scenarios
• Scalability
• Selenium provides Grid integration out of the box

8. ios-driver
• What is ios-driver?
• Used to drive user journeys on mobile UI
• Exposes the underlying Element Tree in a navigable form
• Implementation of Selenium API to drive iOS applications
• Allows reuse of all existing Selenium infrastructure
• We tried NativeDriver – Google project to solve this problem
• We looked at several other projects in the space but ios-driver
• Had the most interesting road map
• Written in Java - suits our skills

9. Our wishlist

10. Who develops ios-driver?
• Francois Reynaud (owner Grid project, Se committer)
• Graham Abell, Darragh Grace (NativeDriver)
• Luke Inman-Semerau (iPhoneDriver, Se committer)
• Kevin Menard (Se committer)
• Daniel Wagner-Hall, Micahel Klepikov (Se committer,
chromedriver)
• Martin Szulecki (libimobiledevice)
• Jason Evans

11. How ios-driver works
Test Client
Java
C#
Ruby
Python
Selenium
Server
ios-driver
Instruments
WebDriver API

12. Writing tests – Plain old Selenium

13. Our wishlist

14. Localisation
• You can only locate elements by their content

15. Localisation
• Accessing the content

16. Localisation
• Localizing the script

17. Our wishlist

18. Element Inspection

19. Our wishlist

20. Hybrid applications
• Web content can not be automated properly with Instruments

21. Accessing web content in a native app
• Webkit Remote Debug Protocol provides the Webkit Web Inspector over the wire

22. Accessing web content in a native app
Test Client
Java
C#
Ruby
Python
Selenium
Server
ios-driver
Instruments
WKRDP
WebDriver API

23. Writing tests for hybrid applications
Interact via
Instruments
Switch context from native to web
Interact via
WKRDP

24. Web applications - Mobile Safari

25. Our wishlist

26. Let’s go faster!
Client
HubClient
CI
Selenium Grid
node
node
node
node
node
node
node
node
node
node
node
node

27. Selenium Grid Extras

28. Our wishlist

29. Adding Native Applications to CI
• The standard process for Selenium testing within CI
• Application is deployed by CI tool
• Tests are run via a browser
• Browser versions change infrequently
• Therefore
• There is low volatility with registered Nodes
• Traditional nodes are immutable
• Native applications are different
• They change on every commit
• An ios-driver node handles this volatility by
• Monitoring for new applications
• Stops accepting new test sessions
• Registers the new capability
• Re-opens for business

30. Our Mobile Build Pipeline
• Jenkins slave running on a mac
• XCode Jenkins plugin used to
• Build app in release and debug configurations
• Unlocks keychain of Jenkins slave to sign app with correct Certs
• Xctool used to
• Run the application unit tests
• Run static code analysis
• Clokins plugin used to track lines of code
• PMD used to detect duplicate code
• GCOVR and Cobertura Jenkins plugin used for code coverage analysis
• Successful builds kick off functional test with ios-driver
• Testflight plugin to distribute good builds via Test Flight

31. Our wishlist

32. What’s next? – ios-driver 0.7.0 release
• New libimobiledevice integration
• Better device support, more control over real device state
• ios-driver nodes will be able to run on windows & linux
• airplay
• Performance logging for MobileSafari
• Will be able to generate HAR files
• New inspector
• Limited record and playback
• iOS7 Support

33. What’s next? – Selenium 3.0
• “a tool for user-focused automation of mobile and web apps” – Simon Stewart
• The Selenium Project will
• Ensure as much commonality in approach as possible
• Host a suite of tests to facilitate interoperability
• Add extensions to W3C

34. • Ios-driver
• https://github.com/ios-driver/ios-driver
• http://ios-driver.github.io/ios-driver/
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ios-driver
• #ios-driver on freenode irc tends to be the best place for help
• Selenium Grid Extras
• https://github.com/nicegraham/Selenium-Grid-Extras
• Selenium 3
• http://seleniumhq.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/the-road-to-selenium-3/
• Jenkins
• https://github.com/facebook/xctool
• http://jenkins.quiedeville.org/job/Clokins/
• http://pmd.sourceforge.net/
• https://github.com/gcovr/gcovr
• https://www.testflightapp.com
Links

35. Any questions?