Appium Automation

Appium is an open-source tool for automating native, mobile web, and hybrid applications on both iOS and Android. Appium supports app automation across a variety of platforms, like iOS, Android, and Windows. Each platform is supported by one or more “drivers”, which know how to automate that particular platform.

Appium Philosophy

Appium was designed to meet mobile automation needs according to a philosophy outlined by the following four tenets:

  • You shouldn’t have to recompile your app or modify it in any way in order to automate it.
  • You shouldn’t be locked into a specific language or framework to write and run your tests.
  • You can use any testing framework.
  • A mobile automation framework shouldn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to automation APIs.
    • WebDriver model that’s already the standard for web automation.
    • Appium is using REST API protocol

Appium Architecture

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Appium Server

Appium is a server written in Node.js. It can be built and installed from source or installed directly from npm.

~ npm install -g appium
~ appium

Appium Clients

There are client libraries (in Java, Ruby, Python, PHP, JavaScript, and C#) which support Appium’s extensions to the WebDriver protocol. When using Appium, you want to use these client libraries instead of your regular WebDriver client. You can view the full list of libraries here.

Verifying the Installation

To verify that all of Appium’s dependencies are met you can use appium-doctor. Install it with:

~ npm install -g appium-doctor
~ appium-doctor

Output

info AppiumDoctor Appium Doctor v.1.4.3
info AppiumDoctor ### Diagnostic starting ###
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ The Node.js binary was found at: /usr/local/bin/node
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ Node version is 10.8.0
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ Xcode is installed at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ Xcode Command Line Tools are installed.
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ DevToolsSecurity is enabled.
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ The Authorization DB is set up properly.
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ Carthage was found at: /usr/local/bin/carthage
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ HOME is set to: /Users/josdem
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ ANDROID_HOME is set to: /Users/josdem/Library/Android/sdk
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ JAVA_HOME is set to: /Users/josdem/Java/jdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ adb exists at: /Users/josdem/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools/adb
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ android exists at: /Users/josdem/Library/Android/sdk/tools/android
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ emulator exists at: /Users/josdem/Library/Android/sdk/tools/emulator
info AppiumDoctor  ✔ Bin directory of $JAVA_HOME is set
info AppiumDoctor ### Diagnostic completed, no fix needed. ###
info AppiumDoctor
info AppiumDoctor Everything looks good, bye!
info AppiumDoctor

You can browse a project that shows how to implement Appium here, this project is using this technologies:

  • Appium Server
  • Appium Java Client
  • Selenium
  • Junit 5
  • Cucumber

You can download the code here:

git clone git@github.com:josdem/jugoterapia-appium.git

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