Wednesday 26 June 2013

Appium: Take The Pain Out Of Testing iOS & Android Mobile Apps

Developing mobile apps involves a lot of effort. As the mobile marketplace gets bigger and more people switch to using smartphones, app development becomes even more important. If you want to build an app that dominates the mobile space, you can’t simply choose to write for one OS and instead need to target as many users as possible with a cross-platform approach.

Appium is designed to take some of the pain out of testing for the mobile marketplace. It’s built on the philosophy that “testing native apps shouldn’t require including an SDK or recompiling”, a bold statement in the current climate. Appium promises to automate tests for any mobile app, using your own tests written in any language with any test framework. The platform promises to let developers write tests with the tools they know and love and use them liberally.

The platform requires Mac OS X with XCode and the Apple Developer Tools in order to work, as iOS development can only be performed on a Mac. Android testing is of course supported, with Google being less stringent about which platform apps can be developed on. If you’re a cross-platform app developer who finds the word “testing” synonymous with “torture”, Appium might just be what you’re looking for. It’s open source and very quick to set up to boot.

Features:

  • Run tests for all of your mobile applications written in any language on any framework.
  • Conduct tests without recompiling or including an SDK or third-party libraries with your app.
  • Designed for native and hybrid apps.
  • Open source, lengthy documentation and quick to get started.

Check out Appium at  Appium.io

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