Automated Mobile App Testing with QARA Enterprise

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The growing usage of mobile devices has been instrumental in the staggering growth in the number of mobile apps. Mobile apps have emerged as one of the most effective platforms for businesses to communicate with their users as mobile devices are always within their reach. It is hardly surprising then that today, not just the big companies but also the small and medium businesses are investing in a mobile app to reach out to a wider audience.

The Need for Automation in Mobile App Testing

The ever increasing number of mobile devices, with their unique set of features nad functionalities, has made the mobile app development and testing process more complex than ever. Gone are the days of website testing when it was all about testing across a couple of browsers – today mobile app developers must ensure that their apps is compatible across multiple versions of a platform, both old and new. This has given rise to the need for frequent app updates, which in turn calls for a faster testing process which is effective and error-free. Automation is the answer to this and it reduces the time to deployment, maximizes test coverage, and increases testing efficiency with minimal human intervention.

Automated Mobile App Testing with Qara Enterprise

QARA Enterprise is an advanced test automation tool developed by The Digital Group, that supports web as well as mobile application testing. When using QARA Enterprise for mobile app testing, there are certain pre-requisites that need to be taken into consideration.

1. Appium Server installed
2. Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) installed
3. Data cable
4. Port that has been enabled
5. Android phone/tablet

Once the pre-requisites are in place, one should follow the steps given below.

1. Before you create a new Test Case for Mobile Application testing, ensure that the Appium Server is running as shown in the screenshot below. Click on the “play” button.

2. Create a New Test Case, and select the “Mobile” radio button from the Test App Type options. Furthermore, click on the “Browser” radio button if you wish to test the Web version of the mobile application. Click on the “Application” radio button, if you wish to test the mobile/tablet version of the application as shown below:

2.1] Testing a Mobile Application on a Web Browser

• Follow all the steps mentioned in 5.4 for creating a new test case.
• Before running the test case, click on the Run Configuration tab to configure details such as the IP address and the Port number. These details can be sourced from the Appium tool’s “Settings” tab. Click on “Save” after entering the details.

2.2] Testing a Mobile Application on a Mobile/Tablet

• Connect the Android mobile/tablet to your system using a data cable
• Click on Run Configuration Settings to configure details such as the App package and App activity. This information will be available from the App settings or using the Android app APK info. Other details can be filled out as per user requirements.

• On the Android mobile/tablet, open the App you wish to create a Test Case for.
• On your system, open the Android SDK application.
• Click on tools.
• Click on UI Automator Viewer. A pop-up window appears, as shown below:

• From the pop-up window, click on “Device Screenshot (UI Automator Dump)”. The screenshot of the Mobile app window that is already open on the Mobile/Tablet will appear.
• In the screenshot, users can click on various objects to view the respective node details. Using these details, users can create XPaths for the Object Handles.

Note: For detailed explanation on how to create XPaths, please contact your support engineer from The Digital Group.

• Users can create the test case steps as shown below.
• Run the test case. Like in Web Application testing, an automatic report will be generated for the mobile application test case too.

3. Run the test case.

So, you see that testing mobile applications on QARA Enterprise is easy. Have you tried it yet? Share your feedback with us.

[STEPHEN CHRISTIE]

Hi Amit, thanks for a great article. You mentioned above that 'today mobile app developers must ensure that their apps is compatible across multiple versions of a platform, both old and new.' so does that mean that to cover all platforms and versions then you need to hook up each as per your android example?

1. Appium Server installed
2. Android Software Development Kit (Android SDK) installed
3. Data cable
4. Port that has been enabled
5. Android phone/tablet

Thanks,

Steve