How to handle slow network connections with UIAutomation - ios

Question

I noticed that all my UI tests fail when the network is slow. For instance a user would try to login and then the next screen wouldn't load fast enough in order for another UIElement to be on screen.
How can I handle a slow network connection without using a delay() ?

Answer 1

You should definitely take a look at multi-threading. When handling network connections, you should make all this processing in a secondary thread. If not, the main thread will be blocked and the app will become unresponsive to the user.
Multi-threading is a very big subject. I recommend you to start looking at Apple's reference for this. You can also refer to a great course on iTunes U (lecture 11).
If you just want to give it a shot, here's the actual code (similar) that you will need:
dispatch_queue_t newQueue = dispatch_queue_create("networkQueue", NULL);
dispatch_async(newQueue, ^{
// here you need to call the networking processes
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
// if you need to update your UI, you need to get back to the main queue.
// This block will be executed in your main queue.
});
});

Answer 2

The only way I know of is using a delay. I usually have a activity indicator when loading stuff from the internet. So I add a delay while the activity indicator is displaying
while (activityIndicator.isVisible())
{
UIALogger.logMessage("Loading");
UIATarget.localTarget().delay(1);
}

Answer 3

Check out pushTimeout and popTimeout methods in the UIATarget. You can find the docs here.
Here is one code example from our iOS app UIAutomation tests:
// Tap "Post" button, which starts a network request
mainWindow.buttons()["post.button.post"].tap();
// Wait for maximum of 30 seconds to "OKAY" button to be valid
target.pushTimeout(30);
// Tap the button which is shown from the network request success callback
mainWindow.buttons()["dialog.button.okay"].tap();
// End the wait scope
target.popTimeout();