Skip to main content

Implementing UI tests on iOS and Android using screenshot comparison tools

Have you ever thought when writing or maintaining UI tests, there must be a better way?

Take a look at screenshot tests provided by Google Firebase and Facebook:

ios-snapshot-test-case
A "snapshot test case" takes a configured UIView or CALayer and uses the renderInContext: method to get an image snapshot of its contents. It compares this snapshot to a "reference image" stored in your source code repository and fails the test if the two images don't match.

GitHub Facebook

screenshot-tests-for-android
Testing rendering for your Android app is hard. How do you prevent visual regressions in paddings and margins and colors from creeping in?
Iterating on UI code is hard. How do you quickly verify that your layout or view changes work correctly in all configurations?

screenshot-tests-for-android can solve these problems by providing a test framework that checks for visual differences across changes.

GitHub Facebook

Google Firebase Test Lab
Test Lab lets you run Espresso, Robotium, or UI Automator 2.0 instrumentation tests written to exercise your app from the Firebase console, Android Studio, or the gcloud command line interface. You can also use Robo test to automatically exercise your app from the Firebase console or the gcloud command line.


Robo test captures logs, creates an "activity map" that shows a related set of annotated screenshots, and creates a video from a sequence of screenshots to show you the simulated user operations that it performed. Learn more about Robo test.

Firebase Test Lab

Firebase Test Lab for Android includes a library that you can use to take screenshots when running instrumentation tests, such as tests written using the Espresso test framework. To add this capability to your test, use the cloudtestingscreenshotter_lib.aar library.

The ability to take screenshots is already incorporated into the test APK, app-debug-test-unaligned.apk, for the NotePad sample app, and screenshots are also captured when you run Robo test. The following instructions tell you how to add the screenshot library to your app and how to call that library from your test.

After your test has run, you can review the screenshots in Android Studio or in the Firebase console.
Screenshot comparison screen

Firebase Take Screenshots

PointFree SnapShotTesting with Swift!

Comments

Most Favorite Posts

j2obc - A Java to iOS Objective-C translation tool and runtime

What J2ObjC Is J2ObjC is an open-source command-line tool from Google that translates Java code to Objective-C for the iOS (iPhone/iPad) platform. This tool enables Java code to be part of an iOS application's build, as no editing of the generated files is necessary. The goal is to write an app's non-UI code (such as data access, or application logic) in Java, which is then shared by web apps (using GWT), Android apps, and iOS apps. J2ObjC supports most Java language and runtime features required by client-side application developers, including exceptions, inner and anonymous classes, generic types, threads and reflection. JUnit test translation and execution is also supported. J2ObjC is currently between alpha and beta quality. Several Google projects rely on it, but when new projects first start working with it, they usually find new bugs to be fixed. Apparently every Java developer has a slightly different way of using Java, and the tool hasn't translated all possib...

Google Drive versus Dropbox

MacWorld: Online Storage Face-Off: Google Drive vs. Dropbox

App Indexing

A better search experience for apps and users with linking to in-app content. Google is working with app developers and webmasters to index the content of apps and relate them to websites. When relevant, Google Search results on Android will include deep links to apps. App Indexing

PlistBuddy

If you want to generate a Plist within the shell script: The PlistBuddy command is used to read and modify values inside of a plist. Unless specified by the -c switch, PlistBuddy runs in interactive mode. Apple PlistBuddy ManPage

Why The Microsoft Surface Just Died Last Week

That was when the company’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, announced the launch of Office for the iPad. He emphasized the company’s focus on cloud and mobile for the future. “We think about users both as individuals and organizations spanning across all devices,” Nadella said during the launch event. And what he said effectively killed the Microsoft Surface. Forbes.com

Server-driven UI (SDUI): Meet Zalandos AppCraft and AirBnB Lona

A short WTF: Joe Birch:  SERVER DRIVEN UI, PART 1: THE CONCEPT Zalando seems to follow the SDUI principle as well - defining a common design language and construct the screens on the backend while displaying them natively on the clients. They even go one step further; they implemented a mighty toolset to enable non-technical stakeholders to define their own native app screens Compass: Web tooling to create screens and bind data Beetroot: Backend service that combines the screen layout definition with the data Lapis/Golem: iOS/Android UI render engines Crazy cool! Good job, guys (when you do an open-source release?) To even move faster a Flutter based UI render engine implementation was great! See also AirBnB Lona SDUI approach Building a Visual Language Why Dropbox sunsetted its universal C++ mobile project and AirBnB its React Native implementation

MobileIron

Advanced Mobile Device Management Mobile Data Security, Visibility and Control for Enterprises Phones are replaceable. Data is not. Advanced Mobile Device Management combines traditional mobile device management capabilities with advanced data visibility and control powered by the Virtual Smartphone Management Platform architecture. The administrator can manage the lifecycle of the phone and its data, from registration to retirement, and quickly get smartphone operations under control. Tour the Enterprise Smartphone Management Dashboard. Multi-OS Device Management Central web-based console across operating systems Inventory and asset management Device configuration Encryption policy (phone, SD) Lockdown security (camera, SD, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi) Password enforcement Remote lock and wipe File distribution End-user self-service App Management Inventory Secure publishing and delivery Rogue app protection Remote Control Real-time, permission-based Enterprise Data Bo...