zz from http://watirmelon.com/2013/11/04/the-current-state-of-ios-automated-functional-testing/

I’ve been working on an iOS project and have been looking for a suitable automated functional test library to drive the iOS GUI. I must say that automated iOS testing feels like automated web testing did about 10 years ago: lots of different tools taking different approaches, and all approaches quite flaky!

Through research I came across quite a few different tools that support iOS automated functional testing but need to work out which one is best.

Whilst I often advocate writing functional tests in the same language as your codebase, in the case of iOS and Objective C, I think using a more lightweight language like Ruby has its own advantages (I don’t really like Objective C).

The one thing I really dislike with a lot of these iOS functional test tools is how they are married to Cucumber and encourage users to write tests like “I tap button x” and “I scroll through list y”. These types of tests are much harder to read as they express implementation over intention and should be avoided.

I will also be writing tests for an Android app so being able to use the same tool-set is a great advantage to me.

I also personally prefer an approach where I don’t need to modify the core behavior of my app to run tests against it (designing for testability is completely different and vital). Some approaches embed some sort of server to receive automation commands, which the user must then remove later because it uses undocumented Apple APIs which will lead to app store rejection. Being able to run tests against the app that you submit to the app store means you can be more confident you have tested it right.

Finally, the iOS app I am working on using embedded web views to display dynamic content from the server, which can be interacted with, and therefore it is vital that these can be interacted with. This feature is actually very rare in an iOS automation framework.

Here’s the list of iOS functional automation tools I am aware of and how they stack up:

• Tool: Frank
  Language: Ruby
  Test Framework: Also supports OSX apps
  Supports other mobile plaforms: Also supports OSX apps
  Approach: Requires you to embed a symbiote server in your app and uses undocumented APIs
  Deploy same app to store: NO
  Supports testing web-views?: NO (only via JavaScript calls)

• Tool: KIF
  Language: Objective C
  Test Framework: OCUnit/SenTest
  Supports other mobile plaforms: NO
  Approach: Modifies your app to use undocumented APIs
  Deploy same app to store: NO
  Supports testing web-views?: NO

• Tool: Subliminal
  Language: Objective C
  Test Framework: OCUnit/SenTest
  Supports other mobile plaforms: NO
  Approach: Embeds into your project but uses UIAutomation instead of undocumented APIs
  Deploy same app to store: NO
  Supports testing web-views?: NO

• Tool: Zucchini
  Language: Custom DSL (CoffeeScript/Ruby)
  Test Framework: Custom
  Supports other mobile plaforms:
  Approach: Generates UIAutomation JavaScript that is executed against your app
  Deploy same app to store: YES
  Supports testing web-views?: NO

• Tool: Calabash
  Language: Ruby
  Test Framework: Cucumber
  Supports other mobile plaforms: Also supports Android Apps
  Approach: Requires you to embed a server in your app to control it
  Deploy same app to store: NO
  Supports testing web-views?: YES

• Tool: Appium
  Language: Ruby, C#, Java, JavaScript, Objective C, PHP, Python, Perl, Clojure
  Test Framework: Agnostic
  Supports other mobile plaforms: Also supports Mac OSX apps, Android Firefox OS
  Approach: Uses Instruments to control app using the standard WebDriver WIRE protocol
  Deploy same app to store: YES
  Supports testing web-views?: YES

• Tool: ios-driver
  Language: Ruby, C#, Java, JavaScript, Objective C, PHP, Python, Perl, Clojure
  Test Framework: Agnostic
  Supports other mobile plaforms: NO
  Approach: Uses Instruments to control app using the standard WebDriver WIRE protocol
  Deploy same app to store: YES
  Supports testing web-views?: YES

I’ll let you guess which tool I selected until I write my next blog post about how to get started in that tool.