Unlocking New Testing Capabilities with Espresso Driver
Android's Espresso framework was created as a "gray-box" testing framework, "gray-box" meaning that it's an automated UI testing framework ("black-box") but it has access to the internals of the application ("white-box"). Allowing access to the internals of the application-under-test opens up many new testing possibilities that weren't possible with UiAutomator2 (with some risks).
Here are the four new possibilities I would like to discuss (with coding examples)
- Access to internal app code
- Less flakiness thanks to "IdlingResource". No need for 'waits' and 'delays' for UI.
- Navigate WebViews using Espresso WebAtoms (this feature is in progress, will be ready well before June)
- Find elements off-screen using Espresso's DataMatchers (this feature is in progress, will be ready well before June)
Outline/Structure of the Talk
Explain what Espresso is, and what the Espresso driver does that can enhance the testing experience. Discuss 5 topics, give explanations of the topic, provide a live-coding use-case, and then give warnings
1. Access to the internal app code
- Because Espresso has access to the internals, we can execute arbitrary methods that are defined within the Android Application
- Briefly mention the `mobile: backdoor` method (won't go into too much detail, because Rajdeep is already talking about this)
- Use case: `view-tag` selector. React Native testers wanted the ability to select items by `view-tag` because they didn't want to pollute the accessibility tag with data that would confuse people using screen-readers
- Warnings: This violates the "black-box"-ness of Appium so use with caution
2. Less flakiness thanks to "IdlingResource"
- Espresso uses a thing called `IdlingResource` (will provide a brief explanation of what it is)
- What this means is that Espresso blocks on the UI thread until it's idle
- Use-case: Give a code example in UiAutomator2 that shows waits, delays, etc.... then show an example in Espresso that takes those out
- Warnings: There is a risk of the UI thread _never_ idling, and test being stuck. Appium works around this, mostly, by disabling animations
3. WebAtoms
- Explain the Chromedriver problems we've had and the version mismatching, and the problem with finding/setting the context
- Sometimes all you need to do is a few basic operations, like submitting a username/password in an OAuth form
- Espresso has a library called the `webAtoms` library, which allows us to execute WebDriver atoms on WebViews, without the need for Chromedriver (or any native WebDriver)
- It uses a Javascript bridge to the WebView, which isn't possible with UiAutomator2, because this, again, is an internal
- Appium has a `mobile: webAtoms` endpoint
- Use-case: A native app that uses OAuth and needs to enter username and password into a webview. Show WebAtoms example of entering username and password and how we don't need to use Chromedriver, or context-switching to pull this off
- Warnings: WebAtoms is not as powerful as ChromeDriver. It should only be used for convenience sake. If you're testing a WebView app (PhoneGap, Cordova), use ChromeDriver.
4. Find elements off-screen
- UiAutomator2 is constrained to selecting elements that are inside of the viewport
- Finding elements off-screen requires scrolling, checking, scrolling-again until the element is in viewport (show code example)
- Using Espresso's `onData` matcher, we can target elements off-screen
- Explain how it uses `Adapter`
- Use-case: Write a data matcher for an element that is an Adapter item and is off-screen
5. You can still use UiAutomator
- The one problem of all of this, is that you can only run Espresso tests on the AUT (app-under-test).
- Espresso can't be run on other apps because the other apps are signed
- No problem, we have the `mobile: uiautomator2` endpoint to take care of those cases
- Use-case: Show an example navigating to another app
Learning Outcome
Attendees will understand the basic internal difference between Espresso and UiAutomator2 frameworks and ways that they can use the Espresso framework to write better Android tests
Target Audience
People who are familiar with Android testing and who have an interest in learning about Espresso, how it's different from UiAutomator2, and how they can leverage Espresso to write better tests
Prerequisites for Attendees
Be familiar with Appium Android testing or at least have an interest in it.
Video
schedule Submitted 4 years ago
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