In the modern technology-driven world, mobile applications are the most important part of every business. Designing an application without testing does not address any issue. The developed application should go through an automated testing procedure to improve its effectiveness and speed. Because of the number of benefits offered by Appium, it is selected as the most popular tool for testing Native, Hybrid, and Web app for both Android and iOS. Appium is an open-source test automation tool and we can test both real and virtual devices.

Why Appium is the best option for Mobile App Automation Testing?

• Appium is an open-source tool with zero-cost features, a cross-platform testing tool to test the mobile app.
• Appium is a cross-platform testing tool that supports both iOS and android application
• Appium supports most of the programming languages like java, ruby, PHP, C#, etc.
• Appium can work on the emulator as well as on real devices.
• Appium supports automation for all apps like Hybrid, native, and web apps.

Read More: How to Automate QR Code in Selenium Web Driver

Below are the Best Practices to be followed for Mobile Automation Testing using Appium: –

Possibility and Concept Study-

To test any mobile application, it’s always need to understand the cost of the projects also proper test planning and the test case execution.

To Automate the Mobile application on various platforms, keep the below points in mind-

• Think about how should we implement Appium automation on scenarios to determine its scope
• Evaluate the time required to automate the applications on different operating systems.

Calculate the Efforts

Test automation teams should determine and calculate the amount of work required to produce compatible scripts, analyse the requirement and develop the test scripts as per the requirement.

Selection of Locators

The selection of locators is one of the most important practices in Appium automation. Testers must be skilled and have enough knowledge so that he/she can use appropriate locators. It’s always be the best practice to use Appium Inspector for inspecting the element.

If the proper lectors are not implemented then the scripts are unable to detect the required elements and the result will be script failure. The below image shows the list of Locators to be recommended by Appium-

Framework Structure

In Automation testing, framework structure plays an important role, it will increase the efficiency and accuracy of the test cases. Also, a good framework will reduce the maintenance cost and the re-testing efforts. There are different frameworks available in the market such as TestNg and Cucumber.

While framework creation its best practice to use a Page Object Model design pattern, in the POM we create a separate test class for each module, and therefore if there are any updates or changes in the application, testing teams just need to make changes in those page classes only. By using POM Design pattern, we can increase efficiency and reduces the cost of the project.

Selection for Device for Test Execution

Selection of the device for test case execution is always a challenging task, to meet the customer requirements and make the application more robust and effective, we must test the application on different devices having different OS and Versions.

Below are the two devices’ options available in Appium-

1. Simulators or Emulators- Simulators or Emulators both are virtual devices, they are easy to set and we can test the different OS and Mobile Version on virtual devices, the testing cost on these devices are much lesser than that of the real devices.
2. Real Devices- Testing on real devices might be time-consuming as it required a set of configurations and different software installations on the real devices. But it is the best choice to test on real devices as it gives the perfect user testing experience.

We can also use cloud technologies as an option for mobile testing due to their cost-effectiveness and ease of maintenance. Testing on physical devices required more cost and more investment, thus using cloud base platform we can increase the test courage and effectiveness of the testing process.

Conclusion

For any organization selection of mobile app testing automation techniques are most important. Usually, having the right proportion of offerings, integrations, and ease of use play a vital role in narrowing down a test automation tool that works for you and your business. For this purpose, the best option is Appium. As Appium is free of cost, simple to learn. It supports cross-platform automation and we can easily integrate Appium with the CI tool.