Is there any way for a UIAutomation script to communicate with the running app and just send it information, trigger a function, or change a variable - directly rather than through the UI?
I ask because I am using just using the script to take screenshots and it would be really handy if I could tell the app to set a couple of integers rather than dealing with somewhat unreliable and difficult to set up multitouch gestures and timing.
I stumble upon this today while having same need.
I have solved this is by using GCDWebServer and sending post message from my app to the local web server end point hosted in UIAutomation.
Related
I am doing iOS UI testing with XCUITest.
Since we do not have access to the app, how do we set defaults to the app?
You can pass all the required data using launch arguments.
Please read documentation
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xctest/xcuiapplication/1500477-launcharguments
The other (and a bit slower) option is to use deep links.
This sounds much more complex than it is, but a technique that has worked for me is to set up an HTTP server in the testing suite that you can use to fetch mock data in your test code. I have had success with Embassy and Ambassador.
So you'd pass in a launch argument telling your app code to fetch from the server. For the case of UserDefaults a helper class for making these specific requests to the local endpoint works well. This unfortunately means your app code has to be doing some setup for testing, but depending on your needs it could be a good compromise.
Another possible solution to crossing the process boundary:
If you are not doing on device testing, you can access "SIMULATOR_SHARED_RESOURCES_DIRECTORY" and provide the data in a file for your test to consume.
On a real device this would be more difficult because you would need to use a shared Group container.
You probably can use "Application Data Package". It's when you save your app state into a container and then run tests with the saved environment.
There are many guides how to do it, that's just one of them:
https://www.codementor.io/paulzabelin/xcode-app-data-suni6p4ma
It might me a more powerful and overcomplicated thing that you need, but opens a big world of possibilities ;)
I am writing an app that makes plenty of network requests. As usual they are
async, i.e. the call of the request method returns immediately and the result
is delivered via a delegate method or in a closure after some delay.
Now on my registration screen I sent a register request to my backend and
want to verify that the success UI is shown when the request finishes.
Which options are out there to wait for the request to finish, verify the
success UI and only after that leave the test method?
Also are there any more clever options than waiting for the request to finish?
Thanks in advance!
Trivial Approach
Apple implemented major improvements in Xcode 9 / iOS 11 that enables you to wait for the appearance of a UI element. You can use the following one-liner:
<#yourElement#>.waitForExistence(timeout: 5)
Advanced Approach
In general UI and unit tests (referred to as tests here) must run as fast as possible so the developer can run them often and does not get frustrated by the need to run a slow test suite multiple times a day. In some cases, there is the possibility that an (internal or security-related) app accesses an API that can only be accessed from certain networks / IP ranges / hosts. Also, most CI services offer pretty bad hardware and limited internet-connection speed.
For all of those reasons, it is recommended to implement tests in a way that they do no real network requests. Instead, they are run with fake data, so-called fixtures. A clever developer realizes this test suite in a way that source of the data can be switched using a simple switch like a boolean property. Additionally, when the switch is set to fetch real backend data the fixtures can be refreshed/recorded from the backend automatically. This way it is pretty easy to update the fake data and quickly detect changes of the API.
But the main advantage of this approach is speed. Your test will not make real network requests but instead run against local data what makes them independent on:
server issues
connection speed
network restrictions
This way you can run your tests very fast and thus much more often - which is a good way of writing code ("Test Driven Development").
On the other hand, you won't detect server changes immediately anymore since the fake data won't change when the backend data changes. But this is solved by simply refreshing your fixtures using the switch you have implemented because you are a smart developer which makes this issue a story you can tell your children!
But wait, I forgot something! Why this is a replacement for the trivial approach above - you ask? Simple! Since you use local data which is available immediately you also can call the completion handler immediately too. So there is no delay between doing the request and verifying your success UI. This means you don't need to wait which makes your tests even faster!
I hope this helps some of my fellows out there. If you need more guidance regarding this topic don't hesitate and reply to this post.
Cya!
I have just tried to run
meteor run ios
That command emulates my application as an app. But there is just one page that would be interesting to have as an app. Can you control this in some way?
I don't think this is possible. The whole app gets exported regardless of platform, hence the universal/isomorphic apps concept. And in the universal app concept is one that I'm starting to find fault in. That said there is a better middle ground.
We'll call it sudo-universal apps. (probably a horrible name, but whatever :D)
Essentially the concept is that you have 3 codebases, for each device (web/ios/andriod) but share many of the same modules via something like npm, or potentially some other way of sharing code.
Then you can focus on the ui for each device and its strengths and weaknesses, but keep all the important logic you've built.
Check out the following:
https://voice.kadira.io/say-no-to-isomorphic-apps-b7b7c419c634#.3bn5ovts1
https://forums.meteor.com/t/say-no-to-universal-apps/16813/7
Hope this helps!
You can check whether the client code is executed on iOS or not, and change the app accordingly:
if(navigator.userAgent.match(/(iPad|iPhone|iPod)/g)) {
// Disable the links, and redirect to which page you want
}
But Justin's answer is great, a new platform usually needs more than just some tweaks. A quickly developed app has very low value for the user.
I'm making a program for IOS for the first time. I never had a iPhone so I don't really get how it works...
I want to make my system able to call a webservice on the background and depending in the answer show a notification.
How can I do this?
I read on the Internet that I can push notifications to the phone, however that won't solve my problem because I want my server to track the user position, so it need the user to silently tell the server it's gps coordinates.
Thank you,
GustDD
I will suggest building the app first to run in the foreground. I will assume you already understand how to use the GPS, so will not go into detail on that.
First off, you will need to write the server backend and app pretty much simultaneously. There are many choices for writing the server backend language wise. I prefer python, others ruby on rails. You want to build a REST API for the server that the iDevice can talk to with simple HTTP protocol.
You must decide on the API. You must think about what kind of data you will want to send and receive and how you will wrap the data. Also what HTTP protocols will you be using for specific requests, like GET POST etc. Furthermore, you will have to decide at what URL's on the server will it be useful to GET or POST to depending on the data you want to send or receive. I would suggest you use JSON to wrap your data. It is quite intuitive and easy to encode and decode.
Next you will have to decide how to talk to the server in iOS. There are many great third party libraries that dress up NSURLConnection or you can use NSURLConnection itself (sometimes a bit tedious). I personally like to use AFNetworking. It will do the JSON decoding and encoding for you which is a big bonus.
Finally, once you have the two communicating with how you want and with the data you want, now time to dress it up. You can allow your app to run in the background and collect GPS data and send it. You can also use the notification center to display information it gets from the server in the background.
Update to Comment
This will be extremely helpful for you with background programming. From an Android perspective, iOS is a little bit different since there is not really a direct correlation for Android services in iOS. Every little detail to put your project together is in that link.
hallo,
I have a common question, I hope it is ok to ask it here.
I have a project, where I should develop a small appliation for BlackBerry. I know Java ME is the platform to do that (Browser and Widget are other opstion).
What I need to do is a samll application which pops-up after every call and asks the user if he wants to save(assign) this conversation (only the duration in minutes of the phone call is important) in his time-tracking database. He can click NO, but after it, he can start my application and see all unassigned phone calls and still he can assign them in the time-tracking db. This should happen offline and than be synchronized with the server via online connection.
My question now:
What APIs are to be used, for handling with the phone-calls?
Are there some downsides in this kind of application, which I newby can not see at first?
What about the different devices?
Thanks for any information you share with me, to help me avoid common newby mistakes!
Thnaks a lot.
That should definitely be doable, look at the PhoneListener interface to check when the phone call disconnects. What I would do is write the application as a system module, that will run in the background on startup. You can use an alternate entry point so that when the user clicks on your icon the application will create a GUI.
Edit: By the way BlackBerry uses an extended version of J2ME. You can ignore all the RIM specific extensions if you want and develop an app that will (theoretically) work on any J2ME device but you won't be able to use a lot of nice features including the PhoneListener interface. I doubt you'll be able to create this specific application with J2ME alone.