A simple proof-of-concept project demonstrating how to test a React Native application using Robot Framework and Appium (via robotframework-appiumlibrary).
For the most part, everything here is applicable to native Android apps, but the demo app is written in React Native. The React Native part is mainly to show that we can locate components with Robot Framework even in React Native apps.
Node is required since the Appium server is distributed as an NPM package. The latest stable version is recommended.
Yarn is used for dependency management. You can also use npm
if you want. The latest version is recommended.
Python is required by Robot Framework. The latest version supported by Robot Framework is recommended.
Install Appium and other required dependencies defined in package.json:
yarn
Set up a Python virtual environment:
python -m venv .venv
Then activate the virtual environment (on Mac or Linux):
source .venv/bin/activate
Or on Windows:
.venv\Scripts\activate
Install the required Python modules in the virtual environment:
pip install -r requirements.txt
Start the Appium server:
yarn start-appium
Before running the tests, make sure you have a running Android virtual device, or connect a real Android phone to your computer.
Run the test suite:
yarn test
This will run the tests and produce the report, log, screenshots, etc. under reports.
After you are done running tests, you can stop the Appium server:
yarn stop-appium
Here I will try to explain how everything in this project is tied together.
The app we want to test is app/app.apk. This is just a simple demo app for Android,
written in React Native. It just shows a scrollable welcome screen with some text.
The actual test suites, written in Robot Framework syntax, can be found under src/. Since
there can be many different test suites, some common functionality is extracted into
resource files, found under the resources/ directory.
In the resource files, I have divided the resources so that different configurations can be
written for different targets (e.g. Android, iOS). For example, for an Android app, we have
to define the .apk or .apks file we want to run, whereas for iOS we would define an
.ipa file. We can easily switch the target by providing the TARGET variable for the
robot executable.
Each test suite includes the common.robot resource file, which in turn includes the
appropriate target resource file (e.g. android.robot) depending on the value of TARGET
that was given when the tests were run.
The tests will generate reports under the reports/ directory.
You can use Appium Doctor to verify that you have all the dependencies required by Appium installed and configured:
yarn global add appium-doctor
Run Appium Doctor:
appium-doctor
View the diagnostics and fix any necessary dependencies.