Category Page

Tag: mobile app testing

Jeroline | Posted on | 2 min Read

Challenges in Mobile App Testing

Mobile App Testing Challenges: A Comprehensive Guide

The mobile market has seen exponential growth over the past decade, largely driven by the mobile application industry. With more than 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide, mobile apps have become an integral part of our daily lives. This booming sector is expected to generate over $189 billion in revenue by 2020 through app stores and in-app advertising, and the demand shows no signs of slowing down. As mobile apps become more ubiquitous, the competition to create unique, high-performing apps has intensified.

Yet, as apps grow more complex and diverse, so do the challenges faced in ensuring their quality. Mobile app testing plays a pivotal role in meeting these challenges, especially as the industry evolves at a rapid pace. Below, we explore the common issues in mobile app testing and offer solutions to ensure apps remain competitive, reliable, and user-friendly.

1. Device Fragmentation: The Complexity of Multiple Devices

One of the most significant challenges in mobile app testing is device fragmentation. With countless manufacturers, models, operating systems, and screen sizes, testing across all devices is a daunting task. Android alone has a wide range of OS versions, with older versions still in circulation despite new releases. This fragmentation means that an app may perform flawlessly on one device but crash on another.

The Challenge

  • Operating System Fragmentation: Apps must function across multiple operating systems, such as Android and iOS. Even within these operating systems, there are variations in performance and compatibility across different versions (e.g., Android 10 vs. Android 12).
  • Device Variability: Different devices have varying processing capabilities, screen sizes, and resolutions, all of which can affect app performance.

The Solution

Testing on a range of real devices is the best way to ensure compatibility. This is where cloud-based platforms like Pcloudy come in. Pcloudy offers access to real devices with varying OS versions and configurations, allowing testers to check how their app behaves across multiple devices without needing physical access to each one.

Pro Tip: It’s crucial to prioritize testing on the most popular devices and operating systems to maximize your app’s reach.

2. Network Conditions: Testing for Real-World Scenarios

In today’s connected world, apps must perform well across a variety of network conditions. However, this introduces another layer of complexity in mobile app testing. Network issues, such as low bandwidth or weak signal strength, can drastically affect an app’s performance, leading to poor user experiences. According to studies, 53% of users will uninstall an app if it crashes, freezes, or has performance issues.

The Challenge

  • Network Fluctuations: Users frequently switch between Wi-Fi and cellular networks, both of which offer different speeds and signal strengths.
  • Latency and Packet Loss: Poor network conditions can lead to latency issues, dropped packets, or complete loss of connectivity, which can make even the best-designed apps frustrating to use.

The Solution

Testing apps under real-world network conditions is essential to ensure that they perform smoothly, even under poor network environments. Pcloudy offers network simulation tools that enable testers to replicate varying network conditions, from weak 2G signals to high-speed 5G or Wi-Fi, on real devices.

Pro Tip: Regularly test your app’s performance in low-bandwidth scenarios to ensure seamless user experiences in all conditions.

3. Choosing the Right Tools: Making or Breaking Mobile App Testing

The choice of testing tools can significantly impact the efficiency and effectiveness of mobile app testing. There are numerous tools available in the market, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Selecting the right one based on your app type (native, hybrid, or web) and testing needs is critical.

The Challenge

  • Tool Overload: The number of tools available can be overwhelming. Each offers different features for automation, debugging, performance monitoring, and security testing.
  • Incompatibility: Not all tools are suitable for every app type. For instance, some may work well for native apps but not for hybrid or web-based apps.

The Solution

To navigate this landscape, it’s crucial to evaluate tools based on your specific app requirements. Pcloudy supports a wide range of automation tools, such as Appium, Espresso, and Selenium, making it easier for teams to test apps across multiple environments.

Consider the following when evaluating tools:

  • App Type: Your chosen tool should support native, hybrid, and web-based apps.
  • Cross-Platform Support: Ensure that the tool supports Android, iOS, and other potential operating systems like Windows.
  • Cloud Integration: Leveraging cloud platforms for test automation allows teams to access devices and results from any location, improving collaboration and efficiency.

4. Screen Size Variations: Ensuring Consistency Across Devices

Mobile devices come in various screen sizes, and ensuring that your app displays correctly on all of them can be challenging. Apps that look perfect on a large-screen phone may appear cluttered or disjointed on a smaller device.

The Challenge

  • Pixel Density: Different devices have varying pixel densities, which can affect the sharpness and clarity of app content.
  • Layout Adjustments: App elements need to adjust dynamically to fit various screen sizes without compromising user experience.

The Solution

Adopt responsive design principles to create adaptable UI layouts. This approach ensures that your app looks good on all screen sizes, from small smartphones to large tablets. Testing your app on real devices of varying screen sizes is crucial, and platforms like Pcloudy allow for testing on multiple screen configurations to ensure a seamless experience.

Pro Tip: Focus on adaptive designs rather than pixel-perfect layouts, as adaptive designs scale more effectively across different screen sizes.

5. Types of Mobile Apps: Native, Hybrid, and Web

Mobile apps come in three main forms: native, hybrid, and web-based apps. Each type requires a unique approach to testing.

The Challenge

  • Native Apps: Developed for specific platforms (iOS or Android), native apps tend to offer better performance but require separate testing for each platform.
  • Hybrid Apps: These apps combine elements of native and web apps. While easier to develop and maintain across platforms, they often face performance and compatibility issues.
  • Web Apps: Running in browsers, web apps must be tested across multiple browsers and operating systems, making compatibility a primary concern.

The Solution

Each app type comes with its own set of testing challenges, and it’s essential to customize your testing strategy accordingly. Pcloudy supports testing for all three app types, allowing teams to ensure that their apps meet the required standards of performance, usability, and functionality.

6. AI-Powered Test Automation: The Future of Mobile Testing

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing mobile app testing by automating complex testing tasks, generating test cases, and predicting defects. AI-driven testing can significantly reduce time and effort, allowing testers to focus on more critical aspects of app development.

The Challenge

  • Resistance to Change: Many teams are still reliant on traditional testing methods, hesitant to adopt AI-powered testing solutions.
  • Implementation Complexity: Integrating AI testing into existing workflows can be challenging without the right expertise or tools.

The Solution

AI-powered test automation, like the solutions offered by Pcloudy, helps automate repetitive tasks such as regression testing, bug detection, and performance analysis. AI-driven bots can create test cases, execute tests, and analyze results, enabling faster releases and higher accuracy.

Pro Tip: Embrace AI-based testing early to stay ahead of the competition. Automating repetitive tests frees up resources for more creative problem-solving.

7. Security and Compliance Testing: Safeguarding Data and Trust

In an era where data privacy and security are of paramount importance, ensuring that your app is secure and compliant with regulations is vital. The increasing number of cyberattacks and data breaches highlights the need for robust security testing.

The Challenge

  • Security Vulnerabilities: Apps are often vulnerable to attacks such as data leaks, insecure storage, and unauthorized access.
  • Compliance Regulations: Apps must comply with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS, depending on the region and industry.

The Solution

Incorporate security and compliance testing into your QA process. Test for data encryption, authentication, and security vulnerabilities. Pcloudy offers features like biometric authentication testing and encrypted device communication to ensure that your app meets the highest security standards.

Pro Tip: Regularly update your app’s security protocols to keep up with emerging threats and regulations.

8. Usability Testing: Ensuring a Seamless User Experience

Usability testing focuses on how user-friendly your app is, evaluating its ease of navigation, intuitive design, and overall user experience.

The Challenge

  • User Expectations: As mobile users grow more tech-savvy, they expect apps to be easy to use and navigate.
  • Cross-Platform Usability: Usability can differ across iOS and Android devices due to interface design differences.

The Solution

Conduct usability testing on real devices to gather feedback from real users. Cloud-based platforms like Pcloudy allow for real-device usability testing, providing insights into the app’s user experience across different devices and operating systems.

9. Battery Usage: Avoiding Power-Hungry Apps

Battery consumption is a critical factor that can impact app usage and customer retention. An app that drains battery quickly is likely to be uninstalled by users.

The Challenge

  • Performance Optimization: Apps that use GPS, background processes, or frequent notifications can quickly drain battery power.
  • Device-Specific Impact: Battery usage can vary across devices, especially those with older hardware.

The Solution

Test for battery efficiency on various devices using real-device cloud testing environments like Pcloudy. Analyze how your app consumes battery power and optimize where needed to ensure it runs smoothly without excessive battery drain.

10. Memory Leaks: Preserving Device Performance

Memory leaks occur when an app uses excessive memory, causing performance issues like slowdowns or crashes. This can lead to a poor user experience, especially on devices with limited resources.

The Challenge

  • Resource Management: Apps need to manage memory effectively to avoid crashing or slowing down the device.
  • Device-Specific Issues: Memory management can vary depending on the device’s hardware.

The Solution

Implement memory profiling tools during your app’s development and testing phases. Regularly test your app on different devices using Pcloudy to identify and fix memory leaks.

11. Geolocation Testing: Apps that Depend on Location

For apps that rely on geolocation features, such as navigation or ride-hailing apps, ensuring that location services work across different regions is crucial.

The Challenge

  • Location Variability: GPS performance can vary based on the user’s location and the accuracy of their device’s GPS hardware.
  • Testing Across Regions: Simulating different geolocation scenarios can be difficult without access to real devices in those regions.

The Solution

Use cloud platforms like Pcloudy to simulate geolocation testing on real devices in different geographic regions. This ensures your app’s location services work accurately across the globe.

12. App Localization: Adapting for Global Markets

Apps often need to be localized to different languages, currencies, and cultural contexts. Ensuring proper localization is essential for expanding into global markets.

The Challenge

  • Text Expansion: Some languages, like German or Russian, take up more space than English, which can break layouts or text boxes.
  • Cultural Sensitivity: Localization isn’t just about language—it’s also about ensuring that the app’s design and functionality make sense in the target culture.

The Solution

Conduct thorough localization testing, focusing on the user interface, translations, and regional features. Pcloudy allows testing in real-world scenarios for apps localized into multiple languages and regions.

13. Accessibility Testing: Meeting User Needs

Accessibility testing ensures that your app is usable by people with disabilities, such as visual or hearing impairments. Ensuring your app meets accessibility standards is vital for inclusivity and can be a regulatory requirement in many regions.

The Challenge

  • Regulatory Compliance: Many countries have strict accessibility regulations, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. or the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in Canada.
  • Wide Range of Disabilities: Apps must be tested for a range of disabilities, including vision impairments, hearing impairments, and physical disabilities.

The Solution

Use accessibility testing tools to check your app’s compatibility with screen readers, voice commands, and other assistive technologies. Test your app on different devices using Pcloudy to ensure it meets accessibility guidelines.

14. Interruption Testing: Handling Disruptions Gracefully

Interruption testing evaluates how well an app handles interruptions like phone calls, text messages, or low battery alerts. These interruptions are common during real-world app usage.

The Challenge

  • App Stability: Apps must be able to handle interruptions without crashing or losing user progress.
  • Consistent Experience: Interruption handling should be seamless across different devices and operating systems.

The Solution

Perform interruption testing on real devices to evaluate how your app reacts to common disruptions. Cloud platforms like Pcloudy allow testers to replicate interruptions during active app sessions, ensuring smooth recovery and minimal disruption.

15. App Store Compliance: Ensuring Successful Submissions

Each app store (Google Play, Apple App Store) has specific guidelines for app submission. Failing to comply with these guidelines can result in rejection, delaying your app’s release.

The Challenge

  • Guideline Variations: App store guidelines differ between platforms, and ensuring compliance with both can be time-consuming.
  • Performance Criteria: Stores often have performance benchmarks that apps must meet to be approved.

The Solution

Before submitting your app, ensure it meets all necessary guidelines. Test your app’s experience, security, and overall quality on multiple devices and operating systems using Pcloudy to minimize the risk of rejection.

Conclusion: A Holistic Testing Strategy

Mobile app testing involves overcoming a wide range of challenges, from ensuring compatibility across numerous devices to handling network variability, memory leaks, and accessibility. A successful testing strategy combines real-device testing, cloud-based automation, AI-driven test automation, and comprehensive security testing to deliver a high-quality app experience.

Pcloudy provides a robust cloud-based platform for mobile app testing, offering access to real devices, network simulation, and AI-powered automation. By adopting a well-rounded approach to testing, you can ensure

Jeroline | Posted on | 2 min Read

7 Types Of Mobile App Testing

Introduction

In today’s highly competitive mobile app market, delivering a flawless user experience is essential. Mobile apps are constantly updated with new features, bug fixes, and optimizations to meet user expectations. To ensure quality across diverse devices, operating systems, and networks, different types of testing methods are required. These testing techniques help ensure that apps not only function well but also provide a seamless, reliable, and enjoyable user experience. In this blog, we’ll explore seven essential types of mobile app testing, along with the challenges that arise and the solutions to overcome them.

Compatibility Testing

Key Compatibility Factors

 

Compatibility testing ensures that a mobile app works across a variety of operating systems, device models, screen sizes, and hardware configurations. This type of testing is critical because mobile users access apps on a wide range of devices with varying capabilities, and failure to support even a subset of these can lead to user frustration and lost customers.

Key factors that impact compatibility testing include:

 

  • Operating System Versions: iOS, Android, and their various versions.
  • Device Models: Different devices (phones, tablets) from manufacturers like Samsung, Apple, Huawei, etc.
  • Screen Sizes & Resolutions: Apps must adapt to a variety of screen sizes and pixel densities.
  • Internal Hardware: Testing on devices with varying memory, processor speeds, and storage capacity.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

One of the biggest challenges in compatibility testing is the sheer number of device combinations that need to be tested. Managing physical devices in-house is expensive and resource-intensive.

Solution:

Cloud-based testing platforms like Pcloudy provide an efficient solution by giving access to thousands of real devices with different OS versions and hardware configurations. This helps teams to automate compatibility tests and scale their testing efforts without maintaining physical labs. Pcloudy also enables parallel testing across multiple devices, speeding up the overall process.

Installation Testing

Key Focus Areas

Installation testing is one of the first interactions a user has with a mobile app. It ensures that an app installs, uninstalls, and updates without issues. This testing is critical to verify the app’s ability to install smoothly across various devices and handle future updates seamlessly.

Key areas to focus on include:

  • App Installation: Testing how the app installs under different conditions, such as with limited storage or in different installation locations (e.g., internal memory, SD card).
  • App Updates: Ensuring that the app updates smoothly without causing data loss or crashes.
  • Uninstallation: Verifying that uninstallation removes all app data and does not leave residual files.
  • Post-Installation: Ensuring the app launches properly after installation and functions as intended.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

The main challenge in installation testing is handling various installation environments, especially on devices with low memory or unstable network connections. Additionally, testing installation scenarios across different OS versions and devices can be complex.

Solution:

Using a cloud-based testing product like Pcloudy, QA teams can test on real devices under real-world conditions. Pcloudy provides access to thousands of actual mobile devices with varying configurations, enabling teams to test scenarios like low-memory conditions, update handling, and different installation environments. Automation tools help execute various user actions during the installation process, ensuring robust testing across multiple environments without manual intervention. This ensures that your app installs, updates, and uninstalls smoothly across different devices and conditions, providing users with a seamless experience.

Interruption Testing

Common Interruptions to Test

 

Interruption testing evaluates how well a mobile app handles unexpected events, such as incoming calls, network disruptions, or battery drains, while the app is running. The goal is to ensure that the app resumes normal functionality after an interruption.

Common interruptions to test include:

  • Incoming calls and SMS notifications while the app is in use.
  • Battery low, battery removal, or plugging the device into charging.
  • OS updates that occur while the app is running in the background.
  • Network disconnection and reconnection
  • Device shutdown or reboot while using the app.

Interrupt Testing Process

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

Replicating real-world interruptions, especially across different devices, OS versions, and network conditions, can be difficult to reproduce consistently.

Solution:

Pcloudy provides a reliable environment to automate and simulate interruptions such as network loss, incoming calls, or device shutdowns. Tools like Monkey (for Android) or UI Auto Monkey (for iOS) help simulate interruption scenarios, allowing testers to monitor how well the app recovers from these events. Automating these tests across multiple devices ensures thorough coverage.

Localization Testing

Types of Localization Testing

Localization testing ensures that a mobile app is tailored to a specific geographic region, considering cultural, linguistic, and regional differences. This testing verifies that the app works seamlessly when localized for various languages, currencies, time zones, and formatting conventions.

Four key types of localization testing include:

  • Linguistic Testing: Ensures that all text in the app is properly translated and adapted to the target language. This includes avoiding mistranslations or phrases that don’t make sense in the local context.
  • Cultural Testing: Ensures that content is culturally appropriate. Some symbols, colors, or phrases may have different meanings in various cultures, and testing ensures nothing offensive or inappropriate is presented to users.
  • Cosmetic Testing: Verifies that the layout and design elements fit well with the localized content. For example, languages like Arabic and Hebrew, which read right-to-left, require changes to app design.
  • Functional Testing: Ensures that the app functions correctly in the localized environment, including handling local date formats, currency, and special characters.

Challenges and Solutions

 

Challenge:

Managing translations and ensuring cultural accuracy across multiple regions can be challenging, especially with languages that have different text directions, such as Arabic or Hebrew. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that all text is properly displayed without breaking the app layout.

Solution:

Tools like Pcloudy allow testers to run localization tests across real devices in different regions, ensuring linguistic and functional accuracy. Automated scripts can be used to check for proper translation, layout adaptation, and functionality. Pcloudy provides access to a wide range of devices from different locales, helping to ensure comprehensive localization testing across multiple regions.

Performance Testing

Key Areas in Performance Testing

Performance testing is essential to ensure that the mobile app performs optimally under various conditions, such as high load, different network speeds, and limited device resources. It identifies performance bottlenecks, stability issues, and overall app responsiveness.

The three primary areas of focus in mobile performance testing are:

  • Device Performance: Testing how the app behaves on different devices, with a focus on start-up time, memory consumption, and battery usage. High memory or battery consumption can lead to users uninstalling the app.
  • Network Performance: Testing how the app handles different network conditions, such as slow or unstable connections. This includes testing the app’s ability to manage packet loss, network delays, and connectivity interruptions.
  • Server/API Performance: Testing how efficiently the app communicates with the server and processes API requests. Slow or inefficient API calls can degrade the user experience, especially in data-heavy apps.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

Replicating real-world conditions like varying network speeds or high traffic loads is a significant challenge. Ensuring that the app works well under different device configurations while maintaining performance consistency is also complex.

Solution:

Pcloudy’s network simulation feature allows QA teams to replicate different network conditions, such as low bandwidth or high latency, to test how well the app performs under challenging conditions. Additionally, using tools like Pcloudy to run performance tests across multiple devices ensures that device-specific issues, such as excessive battery drain or memory usage, are identified and addressed early in the development cycle.

Usability Testing

Important Usability Factors

 

Usability testing ensures that the app is user-friendly and provides an intuitive, seamless experience. This type of testing focuses on how easy it is for users to navigate through the app, complete tasks, and interact with the app’s features.

Key factors in usability testing include:

 

  • Navigation Ease: Testing the workflow to ensure users can easily navigate through the app with minimal effort. Complex workflows or unintuitive navigation paths can frustrate users.

                                Example of Navigation Path

  • Design & Layout: Verifying that the app’s design is user-friendly, with clear, well-organized content. Elements like finger-friendly buttons, minimal text entry, and intuitive visual cues are essential for a positive user experience.
  • Response Time: Ensuring that the app responds quickly to user inputs without lag or unnecessary delays. A slow response time can lead to a poor user experience and high uninstall rates.
  • User Engagement: Testing how well the app engages users emotionally. A successful app should be smart enough to predict user actions, offer personalized experiences, and keep users motivated to continue using it.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

Usability testing can be subjective, as user preferences and behaviors vary. It’s difficult to ensure that the app will be intuitive for all user types and across different demographics. Additionally, collecting meaningful feedback from users to guide improvements can be challenging.

Solution:

Tools like Mr. Tappy or Reflector can capture real user interactions during usability testing, allowing testers to observe how users navigate and respond to the app. Recording user sessions helps teams identify pain points and optimize the user experience. Pcloudy’s cloud-based platform allows for testing on a wide range of devices, ensuring that the app remains user-friendly across different screen sizes, input types, and configurations.

Conformance Testing

Key Conformance Testing Areas

Conformance testing, also known as compliance testing, ensures that your mobile app adheres to industry standards, regulatory requirements, and marketplace guidelines. This type of testing is critical, especially when submitting apps to app stores or meeting enterprise policy guidelines. Ensuring conformance can prevent rejections from app marketplaces and avoid penalties related to non-compliance with industry regulations.

The two key areas of conformance testing include:

  • App Store Guidelines: Every app marketplace, like Google Play or Apple’s App Store, has specific guidelines covering areas such as user interface (UI), privacy policies, content restrictions (e.g., nudity, violence, cultural sensitivity), and data protection. Failure to comply can result in app rejection or removal from the store.

Enterprise Policy Compliance: In some industries, apps must comply with industry-specific regulations. For instance, healthcare apps may need to comply with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), while pharmaceutical apps may fall under FDA (Food and Drug Administration) guidelines. Meeting these standards is essential to maintaining credibility and avoiding legal issues.

Challenges and Solutions

Challenge:

Staying up-to-date with app store guidelines and ensuring that the app meets the ever-changing standards of different marketplaces can be difficult. Moreover, managing compliance with strict industry regulations can be overwhelming, particularly when apps are released across multiple regions with differing legal frameworks.

Solution:

Pcloudy offers a comprehensive conformance testing solution that helps validate whether your app meets both app store guidelines and industry regulations. Automated checks ensure your app complies with the latest app store rules before submission, while the platform’s flexibility allows for testing specific compliance criteria related to industries like healthcare or finance. Pcloudy’s regular updates keep testers informed of any changes to app store guidelines, reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Conclusion

In an increasingly competitive mobile app market, delivering a high-quality user experience is crucial to success. Testing your app across various dimensions—compatibility, installation, interruptions, localization, performance, usability, and conformance—ensures that it functions seamlessly and meets user expectations across different devices, regions, and conditions. Each type of testing addresses specific challenges that can impact an app’s performance, usability, or compliance with industry standards.

The challenges associated with these testing types can be daunting, but with cloud-based testing platforms like Pcloudy, teams can automate, scale, and simplify the testing process. From testing real-world interruptions to ensuring app store compliance, Pcloudy offers the tools and resources to ensure comprehensive mobile app testing without the hassle of managing physical devices or manual testing efforts.

By incorporating these testing strategies, mobile app developers and QA teams can confidently release bug-free apps that provide a flawless user experience, leading to higher user satisfaction, increased app downloads, and long-term customer retention.

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

5 Best Python Frameworks For Test Automation

Testing framework plays a crucial role in the success of any automated testing process. Choosing the right test automation framework is important as it will maximize the test coverage and improve test efficiency which means a better return on investment.

There are some key points you need to keep in mind while choosing a suitable python testing framework. The framework should justify your testing needs and it should be easy to use. Check if the framework has integrations with other tools and frameworks that you might use. The features, support, stability, and extensibility are also important. So let’s compare the most popular python testing frameworks to make it easier for you to choose the right one.

Robot framework

It is still the most popular python testing framework that uses a keyword-driven testing approach and is used for acceptance testing. To run Robot you will have to install python 2.7.14 or any later version, python package manager, and a development framework like Pycharm.
Advantages

  • Opensource
  • Platform independent
  • No need to learn a programming language to write Robot Framework test cases
  • Automatic report generation after executing each built
  • Supports behavior-driven, data-driven and keyword-driven approaches
  • Easy installation

Disadvantages

    • Not enough support for parallel testing
    • It’s difficult to create customized HTML reports

Gauge

It is an opensource tool developed by the team that made Selenium. Gauge is immensely useful while integrating continuous testing in the CI/CD pipeline. It is gaining popularity as it supports many plugins like python runner, IDE plugins, build management, java runner, etc.
Advantages

      • Quick defect detection
      • Easy to write test cases
      • Supports multiple programming languages
      • Command-line support
      • Supports all major plugins
      • Cross-browser tests can be automated

Disadvantages

      • It is relatively new so it will evolve in the coming years

Pytest

Although Pytest is used for different types of testing, it is more preferred for functional and API testing. There are no prerequisites needed for Pytest, just knowledge of python will be enough to get started. It has a simple syntax which makes test execution easier.
Advantages

      • Supports Fixtures and Classes that help in creating common test objects available throughout a module
      • It allows the use of multiple fixtures
      • It does not require a debugger
      • Xdist and other plugins support makes parallel execution easier
      • It supports parameterization, which is essential while executing the same test with different
      • configurations using a simple marker
      • Large community support

Disadvantages

      • Test written in Pytest cannot be shared with other platforms

Pyunit

It is a unit testing framework much like Junit but for python language. Also referred to as unittest, it has five core modules. The test loader class is used to load all the test cases and test suites. The test runner shows the result of the test executed using an interface. The test suite is a collection of test cases that are clubbed logically based on the functionalities. A test case contains the actual implementation of the code and the test report contains the organized data of the test results.
python automation
Advantages

      • No need for high-level python knowledge for test execution
      • Extensive report generation
      • Pyunit comes with Python package, no need to install any additional module
      • Simple and flexible test case execution

Disadvantages

      • Requires boilerplate code
      • Pyunit is derived from Junit and so it still uses camelCase naming instead of snake_case naming method
      • It supports abstraction so the code intent sometimes becomes unclear

Behave

In Behave, test cases can be written in simple language and lets teams execute behavior-driven development (BDD) testing with ease. Behavior-driven development encourages quality analysts, developers, and business managers to work in collaboration to achieve higher efficiency.
Advantages

      • Easy execution of all kind of test cases and easy coordination
      • Better clarity on the developers and testers output as the format of the spec is similar
      • Domain vocabulary that keeps the behavior consistent in the organization and the system behavior is expressed in a semi-formal language
      • Detailed reasoning and thinking promotes better product specs

Disadvantages

      • Only for black-box testing

To sum it up

All the above-mentioned frameworks have their specialties like Pyunit is used for unit testing and Behave is good for behavior-driven testing. Although Robot framework is the best tool for a beginner to learn the nuances of automation framework. It’s always better to jot down your requirements based on their priority and then choose the right python testing framework.

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

Mobile App Testing Strategies

In the year 2028, there will be around 7.8 Billion mobile users which accounts for 70% of the world population. More mobile users mean more apps and more competition and to lead the competition we need to make sure that our app is flawless. If nearly half of the bugs in your mobile app are discovered by the users, your app’s ratings are going to decline and so are the downloads. This is why the right choice of mobile app testing techniques must be followed in the decision-making process.

Mobile App Testing Strategies

Today, the mobile app market is highly competitive. To be better every day and survive for long, the QA team has to follow a mix of plans that would be responsible for taking the right testing decisions. The testers have to formulate testing strategies to face every situation fearlessly and immaculately. Mobile apps have to be perfect before reaching to the end users so there have to be certain decisions to be taken regarding the testing plan. The following model of mobile app testing plans can be considered for better execution.

In the planning Stage, decisions like Selection of Device matrix, Test Infrastructure (In-house vs. Cloud, Simulator vs. Real device), Testing scope, Testing Tools, Automation (Framework/Tool) are taken. Since it is the first stage, it is the most important one as all the further stages would depend on these decisions. In the next stage which is execution and review, decisions regarding Test Case Design, Testing of user stories, testing types as per Sprint Objective, Progressive Automation, Regression Testing, Review and course correction are taken.

We are going to discuss the planning stage aspects more elaborately

Device Matrix:

It is an important factor, choosing the device as per your target audience’s behavior matters in decisions regarding resting. There are different approaches to the selection of the device matrix.

Approach 1- Selection of Devices based on market research.

Determine the set of devices with your target operating System that will have the highest occurrence of accessing your application by using app purchase data and analytics. For Example- if you support both Android and iOS, and your application will be used across millions of Samsung, Google Nexus and Moto G devices but only thousands of iPhones, you prioritize testing on the Google Nexus and Moto G above the iPhone device. So, this test plan will consist of testing on devices which are prioritized by your market analysis.

Approach 2: Categorize the devices based on Key mobile aspects

This approach highlights the categorization of the devices based on certain mobile aspects which can be considered in formulating the testing strategy. The categorization goes as:
Mobile device categorisation

Test infrastructure

This is another element of the planning stage. This focuses on Strategizing on the Infrastructure components like hardware, software, and network which are an integral part of test infrastructure. It ensures that the applications are managed in a controlled way.

Real device, Emulators or Mobile cloud-Where to test?

Choosing the right platform to test as per the testing needs is very important i.e whether to test on the Real device or an emulator or on the cloud

Real Devices

Testing on a real device is anytime more reliable than testing on a simulator. The results are accurate as real-time testing takes place on the device in a live environment. It carries its own disadvantages as it is a costly affair and not all the organizations are able to afford a complete real device laboratory of their own.

Pros:

Reliable- Testing on Real devices always gives you an accurate result

Live Environment- Testing on real devices enables you to test your application on the actual environment on which your target audience working on. You can test your application with different network technologies like HSPDA, UMTS, LTE, Wi-Fi, etc.

User experience- Testing on Real devices is the only way to test your Real-time User experience. It cannot be tested through Emulators or devices Available on Cloud.

Cons:
Maintaining the matrix- You cannot maintain such a huge matrix of mobile devices in your own test lab.
Maintenance- Maintaining these physical devices is a big challenge for organizations.
Network providers- There are more than 400 network providers all over the world. Covering all these network providers in their own test lab is impossible.
Locations- You cannot test how your application behaves when it is used in different locations.

Emulators

The emulator is another option to test mobile apps. These are free, open source and can be easily connected with the IDE for testing. The emulator simulates the real device environment and certain types of testing can be run on it easily. However, we cannot say that the results of emulators are as good as those of real devices. It is slower and cannot test issues like network connection, overheating, battery behavior, etc.

Pros:

Price- Mobile emulators are completely free and are provided as part of the SDK on every new OS release.

Fast- As Emulators are available on the local machine so they run faster and with less latency than Real devices connected to a local network or devices available on the cloud.

Cons:

The wrong impression- Even if you have executed all test cases on emulators, you cannot be 100 % sure it will actually work in the real environment.

Testing Gestures- Gestures like Pinching, Swipe or drag, long press using the mouse on simulators are different in using these gestures on real devices. We cannot test these functionalities on emulators.
Can’t test Network Interoperability- With the help of Simulators you cannot test your application with different network technologies. Like HSPDA, UMTS, LTE, Wi-Fi, etc.

Testing on Mobile Cloud

Mobile cloud testing can overcome the cost challenges like purchasing and maintaining mobile devices. It has all different sets of device types are available in the cloud to test, deploy and manage mobile applications. The tests run virtually with the benefit of choosing the right type device-OS combinations. Privacy, security, and dependency on the internet can be a challenge in this case but it has many benefits that can cater to different testing scenarios.
Mobile cloud

The organization can choose the right mix of above-mentioned platforms as every platform carries its own advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes a combination of real and emulators is preferred and sometimes all three can be considered as per the testing strategy.

Pros:

Devices Availability- Availability of Devices and network providers is a big gain for cloud users.
Maintenance- When you are using cloud services. Forget about maintenance. These providers take responsibility for maintaining these devices.
Pay per use- You don’t need to buy a device. You only have to pay for the duration you use that device.

Parallel Execution- You can test your complete test suite on multiple devices.

Cons:
Cost- Some providers are a bit costly

Automation Tools for Mobile App Testing on Android and iOS

Nowadays, there are so many automation tools available in the market. Some are expensive and some are freely available in the market. Every tool has its own pros and cons. Choosing the right tool for testing would reduce the QA team effort providing seamless performance at the same time. We will discuss the best mobile app testing automation tools for iOS and Android platforms in 2018.

1. Appium: It is one of the preferred MAT tools by testers. It is open source and free tool available for Android and iOS. It automates any mobile app across many languages and testing frameworks like TestNG. It supports programming languages like Java, C# and other Webdriver languages. It provides access to complete back end APIs and database of the test codes.
Top Features:
-Appium supports Safari on Ios and Other browsers on Android
-Many Webdriver compatible languages can be used such as Java, Objective-C, JavaScript to write test cases
-Support languages like Ruby, Java, PHP, Node, Python.

2. Robotium: It is a free Android UI testing tool. It supports in writing powerful black box test cases for Android Applications. It supports Android version 1.6 and above. The tests are written in Java language and basically, Robotium contains a library of unit tests. Apart from this, Robotium takes a little more effort in preparing tests, one must work with program source code to automate tests. Robotium does not have play record and screenshot function.

Top Features:
-The tests can be created with minimum knowledge of the project
-Numerous android exercises can be executed simultaneously.
-Syncronises easily with Ant or Maven to run tests.

3. Calabash: It is an open source MAT tool allowing testers to write and execute tests for Android and iOS. Its libraries enable the test codes to interact with native and hybrid apps. It supports cucumber framework which makes it understandable to non-tech staff. It can be configured for Android and Ios devices. It works well with languages like Ruby, Java, .NET, Flex and many others. It runs automated functional testing for Android and ios. It is a framework that is maintained by Xamarin and Calabash.

4. Espresso: It is a mobile app testing automation tool for Android. It allows writing precise and reliable Android UI tests. It is a tool targeted for developers who believer automated testing is an important part of CI CD process. Espresso framework is provided by the Android X Test and it provides APIs for writing UI tests to simulate user interactions on the target app. Espresso tests can run on Android 2.33 and above. Provides automatic sync of test actions with the app UI.

5. Selendroid: An open source automation framework which drives off the UI of Android native, hybrid and mobile web application. A powerful testing tool that can be used on emulators and real devices. And because it still reuses the existing infrastructure for web, you can write tests using the Selenium 2 client APIs.

6. Frank: Is an open source automation testing tool for the only iOS with combined features of cucumber and JSON. The app code needs not to be modified in this tool. It includes Symboite live app inspector tool and allows to write structured acceptance tests. It is tough to use directly on the device but is flexible for web and native apps. It can run test both on simulator and device. It shows the app in action by showing its recorded video of test runs.

Above are a few promising, popular and most commonly used and mobile app testing automation tools. Choice of tools certainly resolves many testing-related problems faster and efficiently. Implementing these tools requires skill and experience and so an organization needs to have a proper testing team in place to make all of this possible.

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

What’s New In pCloudy 5.6?

pCloudy is committed to delivering the best solutions in mobile app testing and therefore we come up with product updates at regular intervals. This time we are thrilled to announce the release of pCloudy 5.6 with exciting new features to make app testing simpler than ever. Our customers trust us because we believe in exceeding their expectations and add new useful features to enhance the platform’s capabilities. For those who are new to pCloudy, it is a cloud-based continuous testing platform designed to enrich your apps. In this new version of pCloudy, we have addressed the concerns of our users and added new features like Wildnet, Capability configurator, Object spy, and more. Let’s know more about all these features.

Wildnet

An application server is accessible only from within your lab and if you want to test your mobile application with that server, you are forced to work within that lab. If you move with the device in hand outside the lab, you will not have access to that server. How do you test such kind of setup using pCloudy? Because if you are using pCloudy, that means the devices are outside your network. The answer is Wildnet.
wildnet ss
This feature enables our users to test private or internal servers on any Android or iOS devices present on pCloudy. For this, you just need to download the executables for OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) on your local machine, Then fetch the user name and API access key for your pCloudy account settings and use it in the terminal to build a link between a device in pCloudy and your internal staging server. To connect a booked device to your internal staging server, you need to click on the Wildnet icon as shown in the picture below.

Object Spy

While creating automation test cases you need the object names of the objects that are available in your application. For example, if your app is launched on a device and you want to click on a particular button, you have to mention the object name in the script to perform that action in the app. Earlier testers used to extract the object name using Appium desktop, but now they don’t need Appium desktop for that. pCloudy now has an inbuilt object spy through which you can run the inspector sessions directly on Android and iOS devices. One big advantage is that its bilateral view which makes it easy for users to click on any element on one side and view the details another side. Also, the generated code can be copied for future use.
 
object spy ss
In the picture above you can see on the right side we have the object inspector where you will get all the attributes and values for any application. You can select any attribute and perform an action using the tap, send keys, clear and the more option. Following the action, an XPath will be generated which can be used in the automation script.

Data-Persistence

This feature will enable System-admins of our Private and On-Premises cloud to delete older reports based on pre-defined settings. To use this feature, system administrators will have to go to control settings in their pCloudy account and under Infrastructure Management there is an option for Data-Persistence. Whenever any user tests an app on any device in pCloudy, certain artifacts are generated in the form of test reports. Each report will have videos, logs, screenshots, and other elements. These artifacts take up a lot of space so now system admin can delete the older data using the data persistence feature.
data per
As shown in the pic, the system admin can select the date, time and the number of days for which the data has to be deleted. This will help in managing the limited space provided for every team account.

Capability Configurator

In an automation script, we have to include certain capabilities like device name, platform version, etc., to execute the test cases. But now you won’t have to gather the capabilities from different sources, capability configurator will generate the desired capabilities directly using certain filters.
capability
As you can see in the pic, you just need to go to the Devices page in pCloudy and click on the Capabilities tab. Under the capabilities tab, you can choose the parameters like OS, Automation type, Device location, Device name, etc., and the capabilities generated can be copied and pasted directly into the Appium script.

More updates

iOS is a close operating system, and there are many restrictions for testing apps on Apple devices. In pCloudy 5.6, you will have two more functions on iOS devices; close app and lock/unlock the device. The close app function will enable pCloudy users to close any launched application on a connected iOS device using the soft button. The second function will allow any connected iOS device on pCloudy to be locked and unlocked. These two functions will enhance user interaction on iOS devices by saving time and effort. One more new update is that pCloudy now supports Appium 1.15.1 which is one of the latest stable versions of Appium. This will make it easier to perform test automation on iOS 13 devices in pCloudy.

To sum up

The new features added to the platform will help our users to perform live testing on remote devices. Features like the latest Appium support and better user interaction on the iOS devices will empower our users to speed up automation. We are working on some new features, based on our customer feedback, which will be included in the next release. So stay connected for more updates.

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

Ensure Continuous Productivity By Leveraging Remote Devices For Mobile App Testing

Remote working is going to be a new normal and remote access tools and platforms will play a key role in maintaining productivity. Working from home has many advantages both for enterprises and teams. There are many tools that help teams to collaborate and share all the information conveniently over the net. pCloudy is one such tool that gives you remote access to hundreds of real devices to test your app.

So let’s look at the 10 ways how pCloudy could help in maintaining business continuity while working remotely.

1. Remote access to devices: Test your apps from home by accessing remote devices on pCloudy. You don’t have to worry about touching or managing the devices.

Remote access to devices

2. Device access to geographically distributed teams: Since testing professionals are working remotely, the problem is sharing the limited number of devices for app testing among the team members. With pCloudy offering a range of devices over cloud, members across different locations can access hundreds of real devices on the cloud for their app testing needs.

Device access to geographically distributed teams
3. All in one: Manual and automation testing can be performed remotely on real devices. The platform is well suited for continuous testing and optimizes your DevOps process.

4. Autonomous testing bot: use our AI power autonomous testing bot to minimize the effort and time spent on testing.

Autonomous testing bot
5. Team management: Manage platform access to the team members and share detailed app test reports.

Team management
6. Parallel testing: Run automation tests in parallel on multiple devices to increase the testing efficiency.


7. Latest devices: No need to wait for the delayed shipments of the new devices as all the latest devices are available on pCloudy.

8. Fully integrated: pCloudy is integrated with most of the popular tools and frameworks used for task management, version control, test automation, etc.

Fully integrated
9. Device tunnel: Developers can use features like Device tunnel to access devices in their Dev environments like Android Studio or Xcode

Device tunnel
10. Quality support: Achieve quality@speed in mobile app testing while working from home. Our technical support team will be available to help you 24/7.

11. Device management: Hassle-free app testing for our users and our cloud infra team will take care of the continuous availability and maintenance of the devices.

It has been speculated that around 30% of the service sector workforce across the globe will be working from home by 2030. You can stay ahead of others in this initiative and adopt flexible work preferences. Contact us if you need more information on how pCloudy could help in enhancing productivity while working from home.

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

Basics of Appium Mobile Testing

[xyz-ihs snippet=”quickLinks-Appium”]

Appium is an open source mobile app UI testing framework. You can test all types of mobile apps and perform automation test on physical devices as well as on emulators and simulators. Appium mobile testing does not have a dependency on mobile device OS and it supports cross-platform app testing as a single API works for both Android and iOS. Appium supports many popular languages like C, PHP, Python, C#, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, etc.

What is Appium Mobile Testing?

When Appium is installed then a server is set up on your machine that exposes the REST API. It receives a command request from the client and executes that command on Android or iOS mobile devices. Then it responds back with an HTTP response. It uses mobile test automation frameworks like Apple instruments or UIAutomator2 to drive the UI of apps.

Approaches to Test Automation

There is two approaches for mobile test automation, Image-based and Object-based approach. Let’s understand both in detail.

Image-Based Approach for Test Automation

This technique of object identification is based on the image processing attributes of the objects in the Application Under Test (AUT). Example: Automate user options like “click, type, drag-drop, mouse actions, etc.”

Visual verification of the expected output

• Not dependent on the platform underneath
• Can be used to automate emulators as well as a real device.

Image based approach

The object-based approach of test automation

This technique of test automation is based on recognizing the nativity of the objects in AUT. This nativity reorganization process for each individual object in the application is carried out using different attributes that are assigned to the object.

It is used to extract the application object identifier with its properties from the actual native operating system source code, just like the developer used. This is an accurate and fast method to recognize the buttons, lists and other objects used by the application.

One drawback of the object-based approach is that the recognition of the individual attributes of the object involved restricts these techniques ability to function in test scenarios that require third-party application access. This reduces the automation coverage of utilizing this technique.

Object based approach

Which approach should we choose?

As we have seen, both approaches have their pros and cons. To get better results, you can merge both approaches and think about devising a hybrid test automation solution.

The combination of OCR (image based) and native (object-based) approach allows users to build a single script that will be portable across different devices. It will make your automation robust and efficient and allows the users to confidently detect the relevant native and GUI defect within the mobile application.

Appium Overview and Architecture

Appium is an HTTP server that manages WebDriver sessions. On iOS devices, Appium proxies command to a UI automation script running on Mac Instruments environment. Apple provides an application called instruments which are used to do a lot of activities like profiling, controlling and building iOS apps. It also provides an automation component where you can write some commands in JavaScript which uses UIAutomation APIs which interact with the app user interface. Appium mobile automation uses these same libraries to automate iOS apps.

Appium Overview and Architecture

The Webdriver Script sends a command in the form of HTTP (JSWP) to the Appium Server. Then the Appium Server will then decide as per the request which driver should be initiated. So, in this case, the Appium Server will initiate the XCUITest driver and it will pass the request to the WebdriverAgent which is an IPA (WebdriverAgent.xcproj) developed by Facebook. WebdriverAgent is responsible to send the command to the Application Under Test (AUT) to carry out the actions in the app. Then the response will be sent to the Webdriver Script through the Appium server.

Only iOS 9.3 and above version are supported by the XCUITest Driver. You can find all the capabilities for XCUITest Driver in the link mentioned below.

https://github.com/appium/appium-xcuitest-driver

UI Automation Server flow diagram

The situation is very similar in the case of Android where Appium proxies command to a UIAutomator2 test case running on the device. UIAutomator2 is Android’s UI automation framework which supports running JUnit test cases directly into the device into the command line. It uses Java as the programing language but Appium will make it run from any of the web drivers supported languages.

To answer the question “what is Appium automation?”, let’s have a look at the Appium philosophy.

Appium philosophy
Appium mobile testing is required for proper execution of continuous integration as it speeds up the overall testing process. Appium mobile testing helps to run the repetitive test which would take more time to perform manually. This is why appium mobile testing is the preferred choice for the developers when it comes to test automation.

In the next blog, we will learn more about Appium mobile testing and how to install/configure the Appium setup on a windows machine.

Related Articles:

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

5 Ways AI is Changing Test Automation

Software testing has evolved a lot since the time when the waterfall model was used. All the work was done in a sequential manner and only after the development phase was complete the testers used to test the product. Testers used to find bugs but a lot of time and energy was wasted in the process to rebuild and code again.

Now companies are using an Agile model where the main goal is to find the bugs in continuous development, fix them quickly and release the app faster. There is a need to improve the automated testing process to complement the manual testing. More emphasis has been given to CI, CD, and DevOps to make the software development effective.

There has been a considerable change in the functioning of testing tools and test automation frameworks. The most important change is the introduction of AI in a test automation strategy.

According to G2Crowd, AI-powered bots are expected to cut business cost by $8 billion by 2022. Testing bots are already empowering automation testing and will play a major role in reducing the time and effort spent in mobile app testing.

Let’s have a look at how AI is breaking new ground for test automation.

1. Running automated tests that matter

It’s not a good strategy to run your entire test suite due to a very small change in your app that you couldn’t trace. You are probably already generating a lot of data from your test runs if you are doing continuous integration. But it will take a lot of time to go through the data and search for common patterns. So you need to know if you make a small change in code then what is the minimum number of test you need to run to figure out if the change is needed or not.

2. Reducing maintenance and eliminating flaky test

We can run several automated tests on a daily basis to ensure the functionalities of the app are still stable. Although, if we find out that half of this test failed. In that case, we would need to spend a lot of time to troubleshoot the failures and investigate the cause. Then there is a need to find ways to fix the failures and then work on the changes.

software maintainance

Using AI we can avoid issues and start detecting issues in the test before they even occur. So instead of reacting to it, we can proactively fix tests. AI can figure out which tests are stable or flaky based on the number of test runs and it can tell us what test needs to be modified to ensure test runs are stable. AI can also handle test running on different resolutions and can optimize the wait time used in the test to wait for the page to load.

3. Dependencies on other modules

Writing a test for systems having dependencies on other modules is also a challenge. AI can help us to mock responses from a database or server. The AI can start recording server responses once we have written the test and have run them for a period of time. So the next time we run the test it will access the stored responses and will continue to run without any obstacles. This will speed up the process as the delay in response is eliminated and the server or physical database is no more needed.

4. Learning from production data

Real user data can be used to create an automated test and with the help of AI, we can observe and learn how the customer is using our product. We can identify common actions such as search option, using filters, login/logout, etc and compile them into reusable components. These components can be used for our test as well. Therefore, we have an actual test written by AI based on the real data along with the reusable components.

5. Easy execution of tests and speeding up the release

In automation testing, the time and effort it takes to write and execute a test is a major challenge due to the complexity of the test automation tools, app, and programing language used. To mitigate these problems AI-based tools are being used. The use of dynamic locators and reusable components has made it possible to write and execute a test in hours which earlier used to take a week.

Conclusion

The DevOps theory says test early, test often, but this puts a lot of responsibility on the testing team. Also, it’s not feasible for testing teams to spend time to do exploratory testing manually for each new release. AI-based tools can perform codeless automation testing which will save us time and resources and give the testers some space to breathe.

Related Articles:

Suyash Dubey | Posted on | 2 min Read

Run Espresso in pCloudy Using Gradle

Do you know why Google has selected Gradle as the build system for Android Studio? Many Android developers work in a heterogeneous environment with different technology stacks. Gradle solves some of the hardest problems faced by the developers like how to automate the testing of apps and how to manage dependencies and variations that allow professional developers to develop variations of their app with one click. This is why pCloudy came up with a new update where you can now run Espresso with Gradle on pCloudy devices. Let’s get a brief introduction about Espresso and Gradle before we learn how to run Espresso with Gradle on pCloudy devices.
 
Espresso is a testing framework for Android which automatically synchronizes your test actions with the UI of your app. It also let the test wait until all the background activities have finished.
 
Gradle is an open source advanced build tool that allows seamless execution of tasks. It uses domain specific language and it is based on Groovy and Kotlin. It is a plugin based system so if you want to automate the task of building some package from sources then you can write the complete plugging in Java and share it with the world.
 
Gradle allows efficient and repeatable use of espresso and Test Orchestrator which allows automated yet fine-tuned control of the way you run your test. You can decide which specific test suites to be run to distribute the test cases across different devices. It is preferred by developers as it allows deep unit and functional testing rigs.
 

Power up your DevOps with Espresso and Gradle on pCloudy

You would be running Espresso on your machine using Android Studio and Gradle. However, the test would be running on pCloudy device. There is a pCloudy Espresso script that is provided by us and you need to put that espresso script in the workspace of the project. Along with the Gradle script, you will also get a config file. The gradle script will read input parameters from this config file.
 
Then you run Gradle to invoke the script which will upload your Application APK, test APK and other APK files to pCloudy. It would acquire a device to run your test on, it would execute those tests it will report back the status of what is happening into the Android Studio. After the test cases are run you can see the detailed reports and after that gradle script will release the device for other users to use.
 
There is a one-time setup that you need to do to place the gradle script in the workspace and you need to fill in the configuration file. So when you run the gradle script it will complete all the task for you and generate the report.
 

Steps to run Espresso with Gradle on pcloudy

 
1. Download the espresso starter pack from here and Unzip it
2. You will find three files,
a. pCloudy_Espresso.jar
b. Config.properties
c. build.gradle.SAMPLE
(This is a sample build.gradle that shows how to change your build.gradle to add the pCloudy Espresso jar.)
3. Copy the contents of the file build.gradle.Sample to the build.gradle file of your Android Application to register the new Gradle task and update as appropriate (see the image below)
 
33

4. Place the config.properties file in your android workspace in the same directory as your build.gradle file.
 
sdgef
5. Update the config.properties file as guided in the comments in the file.

6. In your Android workspace run the command by typing the name of the gradle task as below.
 
tttt
7. Once the test execution is complete you will get a URL of the test execution report. Some fields in the report are empty right now. We will fix them in subsequent phases.
 
rrr
The use of gradle has made it easier to run Espresso test on pCloudy devices. We can just use the configuration file and easily run the test scripts on pCloudy devices. This will save time and effort as it further simplifies the app testing process in pCloudy.
 
You can watch our webinar for more information.

 
Related Articles:

  • How to Run Espresso Test on Remote Devices
  • Appium vs Espresso: The Most Popular Automation Testing Framework in 2019
  • Run Espresso on pCloudy using pCoudy Utility
  • Automated Testing Using Espresso
  • Espresso with pCloudy.com

    • Shivani Sinha | Posted on | 2 min Read

    How to Perform Local Site Testing on pCloudy Real Mobile Devices

    Local Site Testing on pCloudy

     

    With no access to internal or private servers, complexity in the process of VPN connections, or the problems to test a software, website or service in a production-similar environment, testing your local or a private website or url on a cloud platform has always been a challenge for testing teams.

     

    For all the users who have been asking for a solution to test their private servers on pCloudy devices before deploying them on production, we have a good news for you.

     

    Now, you can access your site behind a firewall, on a staging server, or locally with pCloudy before it hits production.

     

    It’s a path breaking feature for enterprise mobility. You avoid the expense of setting up and maintaining a comprehensive and exhaustive testing setup.

     

    Since private servers are internal to your network, they have no public access which makes it difficult to test on a device on cloud. Local Site emulation Testing provides a platform to test private or internal servers on any Android device present on pCloudy.

     

    Let us see how to set up the connection for Local Site Testing:

    1. Login to your registered account on device.pcloudy.com

    2. Select desired device from the Device page and click on “Local Site Testing” icon present at top on right hand side as shown in below screenshot.

     

    Local Site Testing

     

    3. Download the Local Site Testing jar file as shown in snapshot below.

     

    Local Site Testing
    Note: Ignore if jar is already downloaded.

     

    4. Copy the command by clicking on icon as shown in the snapshot.

     

    Copy Command

     

    5. After the file download is complete, Open your command prompt or terminal

     

    Open command prompt

     

    Let us see how to open Command Prompt in different Operating system.

     

    You can follow any of them among three mentioned ways

     

    For Mac-OS users:

     

    a. Open “Launch pad”: It’s the silver icon in the Dock that looks like a rocket. Type “terminal” in search bar and hit enter.

    b. Hold command button and hit space bar. Pop will appear and type terminal and hit enter.

    c. Open Launch pad and click the “Other” folder: It’s a square icon containing several smaller icons. Then look for terminal.

     

    For Windows users:

     

    a. Open Start and type in command prompt or cmd then hit enter.

    b. Click the Windows logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen, or press the ⊞ Win key. You can search for Command Prompt on all supported versions of Windows.

    c. Open the Run program. Hold the Win key and press the R key to open the Run window. Then enter “cmd” or “Command prompt” and press enter.

     

    For Ubuntu users:

     

    a. Using Keyboard Shortcuts: Press Ctrl+Alt+T This will launch the Terminal.

    b. Press Alt+F2 and type gnome-terminal. This will also launch the Terminal.

    c. Press Win+T (Xubuntu only). This Xubuntu-specific shortcut will also launch Terminal.

     

    6. Execute the command on same location where the local site testing jar file was downloaded.

     

    Command executed successfully

     

    7. After the command is successfully executed you will able to see a success message appearing as “Local Site Testing is enabled in your system”. This confirms that now you are ready to test your private server on the device connected on pCloudy.

     

    Local site testing enabled in your system
    Note: Don’t close the command prompt until session ends.

     

    8. Go to the connected device and using the browser open any private URL to test. That’s all you are all set.

     

    connect to the device for local site testing

     

    You can now find more bugs and defects on your local sites before deploying it to production with this breakthrough feature.

     

    Here’s testimony to it by one of our customers from TagIT mobile.
    pCloudy Testimonials Linkedin

    Why don’t you try it yourself and let us know your feedback in comments about how this feature is useful to you!