Intro
In this post we will show you how to set up your automation for iOS (XCUITest) and Android (uiAutomator2, Espresso) with Appium Java.
Scenario
We want to perform basic UI testing on mobile apps.
General idea
To automate an app, we will use Appium, which is inspired by Selenium and provides the necessary capabilities to automate. Each framework requires a set of capabtilities to be passed to the driver, this is typically the painful step to setup, which is why we give you here an overview.
iOS - XCUITest
The default automation for iOS is called XCUITest (XCode UI test). You need to have access to the build output in the form of a .app file or .ipa file to automate on iOS. Overall it's super easy and did not give us any issues.
import io.appium.java_client.MobileElement;
import io.appium.java_client.ios.IOSDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
import ai.devtools.appium.SmartDriver;
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("app", new File("/Users/etienne/apps/SampleApp.app").getAbsolutePath());
capabilities.setCapability("allowTestPackages", true);
capabilities.setCapability("appWaitForLaunch", false);
capabilities.setCapability("newCommandTimeout", 0);
capabilities.setCapability("automationName", "XCUITest");
capabilities.setCapability("platformName", "iOS");
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "14.4");
capabilities.setCapability("deviceName", "iPhone 12 Pro Max");
IOSDriver<MobileElement> androidDriver = new IOSDriver<MobileElement>(new URL("http://localhost:4723/wd/hub"), capabilities);
SmartDriver<MobileElement> smartDriver = new SmartDriver<MobileElement>(androidDriver, "<<get your api key at dev-tools.ai>>");
MobileElement element = smartDriver.findByAI("appium_username_field");
element.click();
element.sendKeys("etienne");
Android - UiAutomator2
This one is similar to iOS, it's pretty straightforward.
import io.appium.java_client.MobileElement;
import io.appium.java_client.android.AndroidDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
import ai.devtools.appium.SmartDriver;
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("app", new File("/Users/etienne/apks/todoist.apk").getAbsolutePath());
capabilities.setCapability("allowTestPackages", true);
capabilities.setCapability("appWaitForLaunch", false);
capabilities.setCapability("newCommandTimeout", 0);
AndroidDriver<MobileElement> androidDriver = new AndroidDriver<MobileElement>(new URL("http://localhost:4723/wd/hub"), capabilities);
SmartDriver<MobileElement> smartDriver = new SmartDriver<MobileElement>(androidDriver, "<<get your api key at dev-tools.ai>>");
MobileElement element = smartDriver.findByAI("todoist_username");
element.click();
element.sendKeys("etienne");
Android - Espresso
This is where things get tricky. We noticed that there is a lot of fine grained details to setup so that Espresso can build and run properly on Android. Here is what we ended up with.
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability("app", new File("/Users/etienne/apks/app-release.apk").getAbsolutePath());
capabilities.setCapability("allowTestPackages", true);
capabilities.setCapability("appWaitForLaunch", false);
capabilities.setCapability("newCommandTimeout", 0);
capabilities.setCapability("automationName", "Espresso");
capabilities.setCapability("platformName", "Android");
capabilities.setCapability("platformVersion", "9");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:remoteAdbHost", "0.0.0.0");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:host", "0.0.0.0");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:useKeystore", true);
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keystorePath", "/Users/etienne/Documents/old_format_keystore.keystore");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keystorePassword", "test");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keyAlias", "key0");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keyPassword", "test");
capabilities.setCapability("forceEspressoRebuild", true);
capabilities.setCapability("udid", "emulator-5554");
capabilities.setCapability("noReset", false);
capabilities.setCapability("espressoBuildConfig", "{ \"additionalAppDependencies\": [ \"androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-extensions:2.2.0\" ] }");
Let's take a look at what is going on
IPv6 confusion in Appium
capabilities.setCapability("appium:remoteAdbHost", "0.0.0.0");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:host", "0.0.0.0");
In the Appium version we used (1.22), Appium insisted on converting localhost to ipv6 (:::1) instead of 0.0.0.0, so we have to specify it explicitly. This issue only came up for Espresso in our experimentation.
Signing the APK
capabilities.setCapability("appium:useKeystore", true);
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keystorePath", "/Users/etienne/Documents/old_format_keystore.keystore");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keystorePassword", "test");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keyAlias", "key0");
capabilities.setCapability("appium:keyPassword", "test");
Due to the way it's built and run, Espresso needs to be signed with a keystore.
Furthermore we had issues using a modern version of java so we had to use adoptopenjdk-8.jdk (Java 1.8) and use a keystore in the old java format.
Creating the keystore
This is a standard java command to create the keystore. You need to make sure Android Studio uses the same keystore for signing your APK with release keys.
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/adoptopenjdk-8.jdk/Contents/Home/
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey -v -keystore ~/Documents/old_format_keystore.keystore -alias key0 -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000
Building Espresso
Espresso requires a lot of dependencies and build options to be successful. We zeroed in on a configuration that worked. It might not be optimal but at least it works!
In terms of driver caps we need to specify the dependencies in the espressoBuildConfig
capabilities.setCapability("forceEspressoRebuild", true);
capabilities.setCapability("espressoBuildConfig", "{ \"additionalAppDependencies\": [ \"androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-extensions:2.2.0\" ] }");
And in Android Studio in the app's build.gradle
dependencies {
implementation 'androidx.appcompat:appcompat:1.5.0'
implementation 'com.google.android.material:material:1.6.1'
implementation 'androidx.constraintlayout:constraintlayout:2.1.4'
testImplementation 'junit:junit:4.13.2'
implementation 'androidx.test.ext:junit:1.1.3'
implementation 'androidx.test.espresso:espresso-core:3.4.0'
implementation 'androidx.test:runner:1.4.0'
implementation 'androidx.test:rules:1.4.0'
implementation "androidx.startup:startup-runtime:1.0.0"
def lifecycle_version = "2.6.0-alpha01"
def arch_version = "2.1.0"
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-extensions:2.2.0"
// ViewModel
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-viewmodel:$lifecycle_version"
// LiveData
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-livedata:$lifecycle_version"
// Lifecycles only (without ViewModel or LiveData)
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-runtime:$lifecycle_version"
// Saved state module for ViewModel
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-viewmodel-savedstate:$lifecycle_version"
// Annotation processor
annotationProcessor "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-compiler:$lifecycle_version"
// alternately - if using Java8, use the following instead of lifecycle-compiler
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-common-java8:$lifecycle_version"
// optional - helpers for implementing LifecycleOwner in a Service
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-service:$lifecycle_version"
// optional - ProcessLifecycleOwner provides a lifecycle for the whole application process
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-process:$lifecycle_version"
// optional - ReactiveStreams support for LiveData
implementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-reactivestreams:$lifecycle_version"
// optional - Test helpers for LiveData
testImplementation "androidx.arch.core:core-testing:$arch_version"
// optional - Test helpers for Lifecycle runtime
testImplementation "androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-runtime-testing:$lifecycle_version"
}