Month: May 2016

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

iOS Beta Testing Using TestFlight

Introduction to iOS TestFlight

TestFlight is an online service used to distribute and test beta iOS applications. Developers can use Test Flight to evade the Apple’s bitter binding procedure for testing new versions of their apps. It provides over-the-air installation, testing, tracking and managing of Beta apps. In simple words, TestFlight acts as a link between the developer, the tester, and the Apple Developer Center.

How is it useful?

  • Distribution of the app over-the- air to Testers
  • Tracking and managing testing using TestFlight’s dashboard
  • Receiving feedback from testers to improve the app
  • To obtain reports about the device models, OS version used while testing the App
  • Automatically records any crashes the testers encounter and sends it to the Developer

This tutorial will walk you through integrating TestFlight into your own apps.

What do you need to start?

You have to have your certificates, app ID, and provisioning profiles in place before distributing your apps using Test Flight. Here’s the list of items you need:

  • A Developer ID to login to your developer account.
  • A Certificate for Distribution to export builds and distribute apps
  • An App ID
  • A Device UDID
  • Ad Hoc Provisioning Profile to distribute your app on testers devices
  • Sign your app with a valid ad hoc provisioning profile

These items will help you obtain an .ipa file that can be distributed for testing in iOS devices with UDIDs mentioned in the provisioning profile of the app.

Uploading your app for Beta Testing

Open up your project in Xcode, make sure you have a correct Bundle Identifier and that you’ve chosen the correct Distribution Certificate:

Choose Product\Archive from the top toolbar:

Once Xcode finishes archiving your project, click the shiny blue Submit to App Store… button:

Choose your development team

Hit Submit

Wait for your build to upload. Once done you will receive a “Submission Successful message”

Inviting Testers

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Espresso with pCloudy.com

Espresso with pCloudy

 
Now, run your Espresso Scripts on hundreds of Mobile devices and build quality apps faster than ever.

Several Mobile Automation Frameworks like Robotium, Calabash, Appium , KIF & uiautomator have been developed in recent years. Among a few popular ones, Espresso is one of them.

You probably know, Espresso is a testing framework for Android apps. It is predominantly used by developers and testers for testing user interactions (UI) to ensure that users do not encounter crashes or unexpected results while using an app.

There are several benefits of using Espresso, the primary ones are:

  • It automatically synchronises test actions with the UI of the app being tested. Meaning? To improve the reliability of tests, it detects when the main thread is idle and runs the test commands at the appropriate time.
  • This capability also relieves you from having to add any timing workarounds, such as a sleep period in your test code.
  • Espresso has an API that is small, easy to learn and built on top of the Android instrumentation framework.
  • It also supports testing activities outside the app like camera, browser and dialer etc which Appium does not support.

However, when you have limited time and money it is a challenge to take full advantage of your Espresso scripts in improving the quality of your apps. Luckily, there are ways to overcome this.

Conventionally, you would spend a huge amount of money to purchase several Android devices, and spend endless hours running your scripts independently on each device. Today, thankfully you don’t have to do this anymore, there is good news. With the help of a cloud-based testing platform like pCloudy.com, you can run your scripts on hundreds on real mobile devices in parallel.

Yes, using pCloudy.com you can test your apps on any device of your choice and pay a just minimum price for the time you’ve used the device. You can not only save money, but you can also save your time by running your test scripts on multiple devices in parallel and get a detailed execution report.
 

Here’s how you can use Espresso on pCloudy devices:

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Calabash With pCloudy.com

Calabash Automation Testing

Improve the quality of your iOS and Android apps by running your Calabash Test Scripts (Calabash Automation Testing) against real phones and tablets on pCloudy.com.

Along with Appium, Robotium and Espresso, you can use Calabash as well on pCloudy.com.

Calabash is a free open source framework for mobile automation testing. It is cross platform, supporting both iOS and Android. It consists of two libraries – calabash android and calabash iOS, which helps in writing tests in domain specific languages. Calabash consists of libraries that enable the test code to interact with apps. Each of these interactions consists of a number of end user actions like gestures, assertions or screenshots. The Tests can be written in simple, self-explanatory language that can be easily followed by even non-technical people.

Further, to increase the efficiency of testing and to improve the quality of your iOS and Android Apps and you can automate your Calabash Test Scripts against a wide range of real mobile devices on pCloudy.com.

Here’s how you can use Calabash on pCloudy devices:

Avinash Tiwari | Posted on | 2 min Read

Test Your Apps on Real Devices Using Cool Plugins

Test Apps on Real Devices

 
Using Eclipse or Android Studio to code your app? Now with just a few simple mouse clicks test apps directly and in parallel on multiple real mobile devices.

Eclipse and Android Studio are two popular IDEs for mobile app development. The reason behind their popularity is, these are open source tools and have a great community of developers whom you can turn to for any support. Anyway, if you are one of those mobile app developers using these popular IDEs then there’s good news for you!

What if you could extend the capability of your IDEs to improve the quality of your apps? What if you could test your app on hundreds of mobile devices right from your IDE? What if you could with the help of simple plugins take your mobile app development process to a whole new level?

Well, you can – with a simple yet salient solution from pCloudy.com. With a cloud based device lab, pCloudy is contributing to the cause of redefining mobile app testing by providing remarkably useful platform and plugins to test your apps on real mobile devices. As mentioned in our previous articles, it is not enough if mobile apps are tested on Emulators alone. We need to ensure that the apps are tested on Real Devices as well. It is also important to test your mobile apps on different devices based on a carefully analysed device matrix to hit maximum downloads. To continuously develop, integrate and release mobile apps in your DevOps environment such solutions are crucial.
 

Here’s how can our plugins benefit you

 

Description:

Our Plugins act as a wizard that allows you to:

  • extend the ability of Eclipse to use real devices over a cloud platform
  • select and install an app from a Cloud Drive or from local
  • select multiple real devices from a cloud (Public, Private, On-premise) to test your app
  • run test scripts in parallel on multiple devices
  • perform Automation or Manual Testing

How does it work?

If you have already created Test Scripts ready for Test execution, then all you need to do is to select some real devices over the cloud platform and run the execution to test your app. To help you out with this, the Plugin generates a pseudo-code that can simply be copied into your existing test scripts using Android Studio or Eclipse. With simple changes in the test script, the app will get installed and test execution is performed on the selected mobile devices. In the end, a detailed automation report will also be generated through our platform.
 

With these plugins app developers and testers can:

  • choose from hundreds of mobile devices to test your App
  • effortlessly test their apps directly on real mobile devices
  • can view or perform an activity on mobile screen from directly within on your IDE
  • perform automation runs in parallel on multiple mobile devices

Download and install the plugin: