Top Most Appium Interview Questions Part – 3

Can I Interact With My Apps Using Javascript While I Am Testing With Appium?

Yes! Selenium has commands to execute Javascript instructions on your app from your tests. Basically you can send a JS script from your test to your app; when the commands runs on Appium, the server will send the script to your app wrapped into an anonymous function to be executed.

Is It Returning The Values?

How ever your Javascript interaction can get more advanced as your script can return a value which will be delivered to your test when the HTTP response is sent back by Appium once your Javascript has finished running.

However this scenario comes with a limitation: your Javascript can send back only primitive types (integers, strings), not complex objects. The limitation can be overtaken by passing objects as JSON strings or by modifying Appium’s or Selenium’s code to support specific objects.

How Can I Exchange Data Between My Test And The App I Am Testing?

Appium, actually the WebDriver specification, is not made for exchanging data with your app, it is made to automate it. For this reason, you will probably be surprised in finding data exchange not so easy. Actually it is not impossible to exchange data with your app , however it will require you to build more layers of testability.

What Data Exchange Is?

When I say “data exchange” I am not referring to scenarios like getting or setting the value of a textbox. I am also not referring to getting or setting the value of an element’s attribute.

All these things are easy to achieve in Appium as Selenium provides commands just for those. By “data exchange” I mean exchanging information hosted by complex objects stored in different parts of your webview-based app like the window object.

Consider when you dispatch and capture events, your app can possibly do many things and the ways data flows can be handled are many. Some objects might also have a state and the state machine behind some scenarios in your app can be large and articulated. For all these reasons you might experience problems when testing.

Is It Exchanging Data Through Javascript?

Selenium provides commands do execute Javascript on the app, it is also possible to execute functions and have them return data (only basic types).

If you exchange JSON strings it should be fine as JSON.stringify(str) will turn your JSON string into an object on the app side, while on the test side (depending on the language you are using), you can rely on hundreds of libraries to parse the string you receive.

I Don’t Want To Set Up A Whole Infrastructure For My Tests And I Don’t Want To Spend Money On Hw. Can Appium Help Me?

If you think about it, what really is required from you is writing tests. Then the fact that you must deploy an Appium server somewhere is something more.

If you want to skip this part, you can rely on some web services that already deployed a whole architecture of Appium servers for your tests. Most of them are online labs and they support Selenium and Appium.

I Need To Debug Appium, Is It Difficult?

No really! Appium is a Node.js application, so it is Javascript in the essence. The code is available on GitHub and can be downloaded in few seconds as it is small and not so complex.

Depending on what you have to debug, you will probably need to go deeper in your debugging experience, however there are some key points where setting a breakpoint is always worth:

the proxy component is worth a mention. In appium/lib/server/proxy.js you can set a breakpoint in function doProxy(req,res), that will be hit everytime commands are sent to platform-specific components to be translated into automation commands.

Explain What Is Appium Inspector?

Similar to Selenium IDE record and Playback tool, Appium has an “Inspector” to record and playback. It records and plays native application behavior by inspecting DOM and generates the test scripts in any desired language. However, Appium Inspector does not support Windows and use UIAutomator viewer in its option.

What Are The Basic Commands That I Can Use In The Selenium Protocol?

Google’s Selenium provides a collection of commands to automate your app. With those commands you can basically do the following:

Locate web elements in your webview-based app’s pages by using their ids or class names.
Raise events on located elements like Click().
Type inside textboxes.
Get or set located element’s attributes.
Execute some Javascript code.
Change the context in order to test the native part of your app, or the webview. If your app uses more webviews, you can switch the context to the webview you desire. If your webview has frames or iframes inside, you can change context to one of them.
Detect alert boxes and dismiss or accept them.

I Want To Run My Tests In A Multithreaded Environment, Any Problems With That?

Yes! You need some special care when using Appium in a multithreaded environment. The problem does not really rely on the fact of using threads in your tests: you can use them but you must ensure that no more than one test runs at the same time against the same Appium server.

As I mentioned, Appium does not support multiple sessions, and unless you implemented an additional layer on top of it to handle this case, some tests might fail.

Mention What Are The Basic Requirement For Writing Appium Tests?

For writing Appium tests you require:

Driver Client:

Appium drives mobile applications as though it were a user. Using a client library you write your Appium tests which wrap your test steps and sends to the Appium server over HTTP.

Appium Session:

You have to first initialize a session, as such Appium test takes place in the session. Once the Automation is done for one session, it can be ended and wait for another session

Desired Capabilities:

To initialize an Appium session you need to define certain parameters known as “desired capabilities” like PlatformName, PlatformVersion, Device Name and so on. It specifies the kind of automation one requires from the Appium server.

Driver Commands:

You can write your test steps using a large and expressive vocabulary of commands.

How Can I Run Android Tests Without Appium?

For older versions of Android Appium might not be supported. For instance, Appium is only supported in Android versions 4.4 or later for Mobile Web Application tests, and Android versions 2.3, 4.0 and later for Mobile Native Application and Mobile Hybrid Application tests.

For those versions in which Appium is not supported you can request an emulator driven by Webdriver + Selendroid. All you need to do is use our Platforms Configurator and select Selenium for the API instead of Appium.

In the Sauce Labs test you will notice that the top of the emulator says “AndroidDriver Webview App”. In addition, you will notice that you will get a “Selenium Log” tab which has the output of the Selendroid driver.

With an emulator driven by Webdriver + Selendroid you will be able to test Mobile Web Application only. You should be able to select any Android emulator version from 4.0 to the latest version and any Android emulator skin (e.g “deviceName”:”Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Emulator”).

How Can I Run Ios Tests Without Appium?

For older versions of iOS Appium might not be supported. For instance, Appium is supported in iOS versions 6.1 and later. For earlier versions of iOS the tool or driver used to drive your mobile applications automated test is called iWebdriver.

To obtain a simulator driven by iWebdriver use our Platforms Configurator and select Selenium for the API instead of Appium. With an emulator driven by iWebdriver you will be able to test Mobile Web Application only. In addition, in the Sauce Labs test you will notice a “Selenium Log” tab which has the output of iWebdriver.

What Mobile Web Browsers Can I Automate In The Android Emulator?

Currently the only browser that can be automated in our Android emulators is the stock browser (i.e Browser). The Android stock browser is an Android flavor of ‘chromium’ which presumably implies that its behavior is closer to that of Google Chrome.