UI Testing in Phimpme Android

Espresso is an Android Testing tool which helps developers to write UI based tests. After writing tests, developers can make use of Android studio to run the tests or can implement a method in various Continuous integration sites like Travis CI to run the tests on a new push or a pull request. I implemented Espresso tests in the Phimpme Android project of FOSSASIA to test the basic UI elements of the home screen, camera view and the settings activity.

Steps to Add the UI tests :

    1. The first step is to import the packages related to the instrumentation tests and configure the build.gradle file of the application to add certain dependencies. This can be done using the line of code below:
      dependencies {
      androidTestCompile 'com.android.support.test.espresso:espresso-core:2.2.2'
      }
      
    2. To ensure best test results make sure that you turn off the device animations. For this go to developer options and disable the:
      • Window animation scale
      • Transition animation scale
      • Animator duration scale

      After doing the above, your developer options screen should look like the screenshot below with all the animation scale disabled.

    3. Create the java class for the android test with the name of the activity you want to test followed by the word Test. Suppose you want to create a test for your MainActivity. Make a test class with the name MainActivityTest.
    4. Define your tests with annotations @LargeTest @RunWith(AndroidJUnit4.class) and define the MainActivity Test.
    5. Define the Test activity rule with the annotation @Rule and mention the java class which you want to test. I’ll be explaining the codes exactly as I used to add espresso test in Phimpme Android application below. In this for testing the PhimpMe.class, I used the following codes
      
      @Rule
      public ActivityTestRule<PhimpMe> mActivityTestRule = new ActivityTestRule<>(PhimpMe.class);

      The codes from defining the tests to defining the rules are given below:

      @LargeTest
      @RunWith(AndroidJUnit4.class)
          public class MainActivityTest {
             @Rule
             public ActivityTestRule<PhimpMe> mActivityTestRule = new ActivityTestRule<>(PhimpMe.class);
      
    6. After this, start writing the tests with the @Test annotations, the code as I used to test the Load more photos button in the MainActivity of the Phimpme Application is shown below:
      
      @Test
      ViewInteraction imageView = onView(
                      allOf(withId(R.id.btnLoadMoreLocalPhotos),
                              childAtPosition(
                                      allOf(withId(R.id.titlebarLocalPhotos),
                                              childAtPosition(
                                                      IsInstanceOf.instanceOf(android.widget.LinearLayout.class),
                                                      0)),
                                      1),
                              isDisplayed()));
      imageView.check(matches(isDisplayed()));
      

 

The above code checks whether the plus button in the top right corner is visible in the UI.

For the complete code, please refer to the Phimpme Android Repository of FOSSASIA or refer to this pull request in which I added tests for all the Activities and Fragments of the Phimpme Android Application. Since we are rebuilding the application by modifying the whole view of the application, the tests are currently removed. As soon as the application becomes fairly stable, I will be adding the Tests in this in the same way.

For complete tutorial on setting up the test using the Android Studio Inbuilt functionality. Refer to :

https://developer.android.com/studio/test/espresso-test-recorder.html#run-an-espresso-test-with-firebase-test-lab

That’s it for now. Thanks!

Resources :

https://developer.android.com/training/testing/ui-testing/espresso-testing.html

https://github.com/fossasia/phimpme-android/pull/85/files

https://developer.android.com/studio/test/espresso-test-recorder.html#run-an-espresso-test-with-firebase-test-lab

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