Top 8 Mobile Test Automation Frameworks ‍

In the last few years, we all have witnessed a surge in the usage of smartphones. A report suggests that people are spending more time on mobile devices than on television. They are glued to different types of mobile apps.

According to statista.com, mobile apps are anticipated to generate around $935 billion in revenue by 2023. Catering to these stats, it is visible how mobile apps are dominating a large part of people's day-to-day experiences...

This is why businesses of all fields are willing to leverage automation testing frameworks for their apps. This is so to ensure that their apps work seamlessly on both Androidand iOS.In this blog, we will get to know about some most popular mobile test automation frameworks.

Let's begin!!

Appium

• Appium is a renowned open-source framework used for automation mobile app testing. It allows developers to automate the testing of both native or hybrid iOS and Android applications.
• Appium works along with the WebDriver interface.
• Likewise, Selenium and Appium too allow QAs to create test scripts in multiple programming languages such as JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Python, and C#
• Appium is best known for its features like flexibility and cross-platform compatibility that can be used by testers to create test scripts applicable on multiple platforms (Windows, iOS, and Android) – using the same API.
• Essentially, Appium saves the time as users can reuse their source code for Android as well as iOS.

MoboRaptors

• MoboRaptors is one of the most secure and robust mobile automation frameworks that help your business achieve quick, accurate, and quality web solutions.
• It is BugRaptors’ proprietary automation testing framework that supports multiple browsers.
• It is well integrated with CI enabling smoother test execution, and claimed to be 10X faster.
• It facilitates independent test data and code reuse with flexible execution.
• Supports multiple consoles and browsers to create a strong user base.

XCUITest

• Among mobile testing automation frameworks, XCUITest is best known for testing iOS apps.
• It was launched by Apple in 2015;
• It is often considered the best way to create automated tests on native iOS apps.
• It is known for its super-fast execution, intuitive and efficient operations, reduced flakiness, and easy-to-go test management process.
• However, it does not support a cross-platform framework, which means tests written here cannot be reused to verify Android apps.
• It doesn't allow you to pick any programming language to create tests.
• Despite all these drawbacks, XCUITest is considered most effective when working with iOS apps as it truly sticks to the fact that it has been designed by Apple to align flawlessly with their environment.

Earl Grey

• It is one of the popular automation frameworks for mobile testing.
• It was developed by Google and is an automated framework especially used for creating UI and functionality tests.
• It uses Unit Testing Target and is equipped with robust, in-built synchronisation that enables easier creation and maintenance of tests.
• The version of EarlGrey 2.0 combines EarlGrey with XCUITest, thereby allowing testing of iOS apps along with Android apps.
• It is also used to test iOS versions of its apps such as Youtube, Gmail, etc.

Espresso

• Espresso is a mobile automation framework developed by Google that enables the creation and deployment of UI tests for Android applications.
• It can be used by various app developers and app testers widely because it allows Developers to determine the user interface of the application before deploying it,
• This framework saves the recording and generates UI test cases that can be used to test the application.
• It goes well with both black-box testing as well as testing of individual components during early development cycles.
• This robust framework helps developers and testers to test both Android native views with hybrid web views.
• Espresso test cases can be drafted in Java or Kotlin. Some of the unique features include synchronising test executions and intent validations,

Robotium

• Robotium is one of the popular open-source tools dedicated to testing android applications only.
• In this framework, test cases are written in Java language.
• Robotium is popular for its feature of writing automated black-box test cases.
• It can automate multiple activities that a tester can execute on their android app and takes minimal time to write test cases.

Calabash

• Calabash is a one-it-is-kind cross-platform test automation framework for both Android and iOS native and hybrid applications.
• Calabash's easy-to-understand syntax helps even non-technical people in creating and executing automated acceptance tests for apps on both mobile portals.
• Calabash's tests are described in Cucumber initially and then later converted to Robotium or Frank in run time.
• To learn more, there is a Calabash 101 eBook that helps to give you an extensive understanding.