In recent years, a number of tools and technologies have been introduced in application development. This advancement has made the process quite progressive, same goes for the application testing field. It is the need of the hour to use advanced frameworks for testing to cope with the changing trends.
For the test automation of iOS applications, several tools are popular because of their robustness and quick results. In this article, we will walk you through the following automated testing tools:
- Appium
- Detox
- XCTest/XCUITests
- Calabash
- EarlGrey
Appium:
Appium is one of the most trending automated testing frameworks. It is open-source and enables testers to automate cross-platform mobile applications. Appium is user-friendly and versatile, which makes it an ideal choice for automation testing. Here are some points that make Appium stand out among the others:
- It is a leading open-source framework for cross-platform mobile test automation.
- Appium works with all testing frameworks and most of the programming languages.
- It has active community support to help the testers if they face any issue.
- It is totally free and very simple to use.
Know more about Appium here.
Detox:
Detox is an end-to-end automation testing framework used for the testing of cross-platform mobile applications. It is a JavaScript based tool that supports grey-box testing of mobile applications. It monitors the state of the application and executes tests accordingly. Here are some strengths of Detox:
- It supports cross-platform testing of mobile applications.
- Detox is test-runner independent, so you can use any test runner for it.
- Testers can execute end-to-end tests on CI platforms like Travis.
- It is easy to debug.
Visit here for more details about Detox.
XCTest and XCUITest:
XCTest and XCUITest are test automation frameworks that come with Apple’s Xcode. XC is used for backend testing while XCUI is used for the testing of user interface (as suggested by the names). These frameworks give fast and accurate feedback while providing the option for testing on simulators as well. Here are some key points about XCTest and XCUITest:
- Integral tool for the testing of iOS applications because it is in sync with the Apple suite.
- Yields faster and reliable results.
- Easy to maintain because it operates directly at the object level.
To know more about XCTest and XCUITest, See here.
Calabash is a simple and open-source tool used for automated testing of mobile applications. It does not require deep programming knowledge for writing test cases because it supports test cases written in simple English language. It can run on physical devices and simulators, but it does not support a variety of programming languages. Some key benefits of Calabash are:
- Supports testing of local and hybrid mobile applications.
- Easy to use.
- Provides access to several cloud devices.
More information about Calabash is given here.
EarlGrey:
EarlGrey is an open source iOS UI Test automation framework. It helps testers to write concise test cases and access synchronization functions that enable the tracking of network requests, UI changes and lots more. Some advantages of EarlGrey are:
- Easy to use.
- It has white-box testing capability.
- Enables testers to configure and run test cases directly from Xcode.
Click here for more information.
Conclusion:
Every automation tool has some strengths and drawbacks. However, these tools are suitable according to the system requirements and other factors. So, it is quite important to choose the right test automation framework according to your application requirements.
