The proliferation of smartphones has brought a wide range of devices, platforms, and operating systems into the market. Mobile-first apps are now the new trend, making mobile testing a crucial aspect of testing strategy. Mobile testing helps to ensure that mobile websites or web applications function correctly across a variety of devices and browsers and that it meets user’s expectations. Automation testing tools are the key to accommodate mobile app solutions.
Selenium is a popular automation tool primarily used for testing web applications, and it doesn’t directly support mobile testing. However, many testers use Selenium mobile testing because it offers frameworks to test mobile apps. Integration with Selenium-based frameworks like Appium and Selendroid can be used for mobile web testing.
In this guide article, we will discuss some key concepts for performing Selenium mobile testing. We will first look at what Appium and Selendroid are, what their features are, and how their integration helps in Selenium mobile testing so let’s start.
Understanding Selenium mobile app testing
Considering the popularity of mobile websites, mobile testing has become crucial in recent years. With the abundance of devices and screen sizes available, and the dependability of people on mobile applications the requirement of testing becomes much required. Due to the usage of mobile applications and high competition testers need to thoroughly test mobile websites across different screen resolutions, operating system versions, and network bandwidths to ensure that it is responsive and adaptive, and this is when selenium mobile app testing comes into the frame.
It is true that Selenium is one of the most widely used automated testing frameworks for desktop and web applications, and can’t be directly used for mobile testing.
However, integrating it with additional tools like Appium and Selendroid extends its support for mobile applications both on Android and iOS platforms by using the traditional testing approach.
Now, when we know that testers cannot directly use Selenium to write automated test scripts for mobile application testing, it doesn’t mean that they cannot create frameworks on top of Selenium that do extend to mobile. Testers need to use Selenium-supported frameworks like Appium and Selendroid that lets them create tests using a variety of languages like C#, Python, and Java and then execute them using an architecture similar to the WebDriver protocol. Furthermore, both allow testing of browser-based, native, and hybrid apps across Android and iOS devices.
Let’s discuss them, in brief, to understand how they enhance Selenium’s capability for mobile test automation.
Selendroid
Selendroid also known as ‘Selenium for Android, is a Selenium-based mobile testing framework, used to run automated tests on Android devices. It uses JSON Wire protocol to provide backward compatibility with the older Android versions. However, it can be used to test iOS mobile applications as well by using an iOS driver.
Features of Selendroid
- Works on native Android applications (i, e, applications written specifically for Android) as well as hybrid applications (i, e apps that are built using web technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
- It can connect with different Android devices via the Selendroid server, allowing testing on different devices at the same time.
- Testers can leverage Selenium’s well-established framework and use the same code and tools to automate Android applications, as it is built on top of the Selenium WebDriver API. Hence developers already familiar with Selenium can easily transition to mobile testing.
- Selendroid allows real-time interaction with UI elements like buttons, text fields, and more, on the device, just like a user would.
- Provides a built-in Android Driver Webview App to test mobile web applications by interacting with the HTML elements inside them. This enables testers to test web pages in the context of a native Android app.
- It is compatible with other testing and CI/CD tools like JUnit, and TestNG, and builds systems like Maven or Gradle, making it suitable for automated testing in continuous integration workflows.
- Its Dynamic Extensibility feature allows adding, editing, or modifying the test script while the tests are running.
Components of Selendroid
Selendroid Client- The Selendroid Client is responsible for the test script execution.
Written in Java (or any language that supports WebDriver), the client communicates with the Selendroid server to send test commands and receive results. The client uses Selenium WebDriver API for interacting with the elements of the Android application, meaning test scripts written in Selenium will work with Selendroid with minimal changes.
Selendroid Server- The Selendroid Server is the core component of Selendroid architecture. It acts as a bridge between the test code and the Android device (real or emulator). It is responsible for managing communication between the test script and the Android app under test. Selendroid involves sending and receiving WebDriver commands, translating them into actions, and returning results as pass or fail, screenshots and logs back to the test script.
Android Driver App- It is a built-in Android driver web view app for testing the mobile web.
Selendroid-Standalone- This component is used to install the Selendroid server and the application under test. It acts as a proxy between the Selendroid client and the Selendroid server. After the session is initialized, the subsequent requests are directly forwarded to the server on the device, and the response is routed back to the client.
Despite the above-mentioned features, Selendroid offers limited options as it is specifically designed for Android testing and it is not ideal for iOS testing. This is where Appium comes as a rescue of Selenium mobile testing developers.
Appium
Appium is an open-source powerful mobile automation testing framework that is based on Selenium. For cross-platform testing, it extends Selenium to support mobile applications on both iOS and Android.
Selenium supports mobile testing through Appium, which uses Selenium webDriver protocol to interact with mobile devices for automating mobile applications. It also has a built-in Selendroid mode for testing older versions of Android applications. Appium offers support for both native and hybrid mobile applications, and a unified API for interacting and supporting a variety of programming languages like Java, Python, C#, and Ruby on Android and iOS platforms. Testers can write single test code for both Android and iOS here.
Features of Appium
- Provides automated testing for both Android and iOS (Hybrid, Native, and Web applications), Also, it can be used for testing Windows desktop applications. In addition to mobile apps, it can also be used to automate Windows desktop applications, making it ideal for cross-platform testing.
- Appium can test apps without needing access to the app’s source code.
- It can be used for automating tests on real Android and iOS devices, providing realistic and high-fidelity testing. It also supports emulators and simulators, providing a cost-effective way to perform tests when physical devices are not available.
- Appium supports parallel testing of test scripts concurrently on multiple devices or configurations, enabling faster test cycles, and scaling to testing efforts.
- Provide integration with cloud-based testing platforms like LambdaTest, allowing tests to be executed on a wide range of devices in the cloud.
- Works on client-server architecture. It has a built-in HTTP server written in Node.js and helps communicate between clients and mobile devices.
- Enables testers to write one set of test scripts using the same API that can be executed on iOS, Windows, and Android platforms with minimal changes. Hence, allows for code reusability.
Components of Appium
Appium client- The Appium clients send HTTP requests to the Appium server, for performing specific actions on the mobile devices.
Appium server- The Appium is written using Node.js. It acts as a bridge between the test scripts and the devices. The server receives connection and command requests from the client written in JSON and executes them into actions on mobile devices (Android or iOS).
End device- These are the actual mobile devices or emulators on which the automated test scripts are executed.
Choosing between Appium and Selendroid for testing mobile apps with Selenium
Now that we have understood that Appium and Selendroid have their share of benefits and usage and that both make it possible to run Selenium-like tests on mobile devices. Let’s discuss which serves best for Selenium mobile automation testing.
Appium and Selendroid are used according to the specific testing needs. However,in general, Appium is the better choice for a Selenium-like approach to mobile testing. It is more popular overall and allows for automating functional, regression, compatibility, and integration testing of Android and iOS applications.
Appium can test iOS apps without any special configurations, whereas Selendroid requires a special iOS driver for iOS testing. Additionally, Appium can test Windows desktop apps natively, which comes in handy if testers want to test cross-platform apps and want a single framework to do it. However, for testing Android versions 10-17, testers should choose Selendroid as it provides backward compatibility support.
Setting up the Selenium mobile testing environment
Setting up a Selenium-based mobile testing environment involves configuring the tools and technologies required for testing mobile applications (both Android and iOS) using Selenium WebDriver with Appium. Below are the detailed steps for setting up a Selenium mobile testing environment for Android and iOS.
- The developers can first write automated tests in multiple programming languages through the Selenium mobile testing tool. To access the Selenium testing tool, first, they need to install the Selenium WebDriver to interact with mobile browsers and WebViews.
- Appium acts as a bridge for mobile automation. It uses Selenium WebDriver to interact with mobile devices and automate mobile applications. Appium serves as the interface for both Android and iOS automation.
- Since Appium is built using Node.js, testers need to install it in their environment. After this, they need to go for mobile device setup. This includes ensuring that either an Android Emulator/iOS Simulator or Real Device is connected to the system for running tests. For Android it requires installing Android Studio to manage Android emulators, and for iOS: installing Xcode on macOS is required to manage iOS simulators and run tests on iOS devices.
- Once everything is successfully installed, testers can start writing the Selenium test scripts using Selenium WebDriver with Appium libraries. After the test scripts are written for Selenium mobile app testing, testers can execute them on different mobile devices.
Using Selenium on real device cloud for Cross browser testing
As discussed above, Selenium itself doesn’t support mobile app testing. However, Selenium lovers can get a Selenium-like testing experience for mobile apps easily by taking advantage of Appium and Selendroid. However, for an end-to-end automation of mobile testing with a stable mobile inspector, testers can utilize LambdaTest, a real device cloud offering a solid platform that allows real-time automated testing of mobile applications from anywhere, using a browser and a stable internet connection.
LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets testers perform mobile testing on a real device cloud. The platform provides access to more than 3000 environments, and real mobile devices at scale. By combining the platform’s AI capabilities with traditional tools like Selenium, testers can automate testing on real devices without needing to manage complex configurations.
This AI-driven approach helps developers eliminate the need for maintaining costly internal device libraries and reduce heavy operational overheads, thus speeding up testing cycles and ensuring more comprehensive test coverage across multiple platforms with fewer resources.
The platform integrates with various AI testing tools, enabling testers to recreate realistic user scenarios to ensure the app functions as expected under real-world conditions. This includes various test scenarios like testing different network conditions, device orientations, and interactions like taps, swipes, and gestures
In addition, the platform offers various extra features intended to improve the mobile testing experience. When performing real device cloud testing, testers can debug apps using its features which include screenshot capturing, recording test sessions, network logs, device logs, app logs, videos, live debugging, and device controlling, making it the best tool for mobile testing.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Selenium is a widely used open-source automated testing framework for web applications. However, being a web app developer, it is essential to remain well aware of Selenium mobile testing capabilities.
Selenium can be used for mobile testing through Appium, an open-source tool used for automating both Android & iOS applications. It provides a powerful and flexible solution for automated testing of mobile applications by using Selenium webDriver, offering a more comprehensive, seamless experience for testers.
