UI automation testing with multilanguage in iOS - ios

Question

I've written some UI tests in Xcode 7 and when I need to refer to a button I use its accessibility.identifier. This logic worked correctly for all the languages.
app.buttons["signin"].tap()
With Xcode 7.3 when I try to launch this code the test fails because the button cannot be found if the simulator language is not English. I've also tried to record the navigation to check how Xcode reads this button when language is different by English and I found out that it use the translations as key... it doesn't make any sense at all!
Those test were really useful to create screenshots... but obviously with this issue I cannot run tests (and create screens) for all the languages.
How can I point to a button in absolute way if it cannot be recognized by identifier!?
----EDIT
I found the main issue. The company that did the translation has translated the labelidentifier fields :/
I'm trying to get the element using app.buttons.elementBoundByIndex(1) but it doesn't seem to work correctly

Answer 1

Accessibility identifiers should not be localized strings, otherwise they will change when you are running your app in a different language.
Just hard-code the accessibility identifiers to make them persistent regardless of language.
button.accessibilityIdentifier = "myButton"

Answer 2

You can have actual accessibilityIdentifier assigned to button and then try accessing it. Accessing buttons with text is always a bad idea as text may change anytime.
E.g. : XCUIApplication().buttons["AppSignInIdentifier"]

Answer 3

I hope your project is maintaining the localization file. I faced the same issue. If so then localization doesn't work directly with UIAutomation yet.
There is a workaround for this, I am sharing the code snippet with you.
You need to find out the xcodeproj file in your bundle first. As these files are not bundled in the UIAutomation target.
- (NSString *)getLocalizedString:(NSString *)string withComments:(NSString *)comments {
NSString *userLocale = [[NSLocale currentLocale] localeIdentifier];
NSString *userLanguage = [userLocale substringToIndex:2];
NSString *path = [self getProjectPath];
path = [path stringByAppendingPathComponent:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"/YourProjectFileName/Resources/Localization/%#.lproj",userLanguage]];
NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle bundleWithPath:path];
NSString *localizedString = NSLocalizedStringFromTableInBundle(string, #"Localizable", bundle, comments);
return localizedString;
}
- (NSString *)getProjectPath {
NSString *currentSourceFilePath = [[NSString stringWithCString:__FILE__ encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] stringByDeletingLastPathComponent];
NSString *currentPath = [currentSourceFilePath copy];
BOOL foundIt = NO;
do {
NSString *testPath = [currentPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"XYZ.xcodeproj"];
if ([[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:testPath]) {
// found it
foundIt = YES;
break;
}
if ([currentPath isEqualToString:#"/"]) {
// cannot go further up
break;
}
currentPath = [currentPath stringByDeletingLastPathComponent];
} while ([currentPath length]);
if (!foundIt) {
return nil;
}
return currentPath;
}
And to use this //
NSString *loginStr = [self getLocalizedString:#"Login" withComments:#""];
And moreover for the better use of Automation, please set the accessibility labels for your controls, so that it would be easy for the automation process to find out that, which is less overhead on processor and less prone to crashes and issues.