How does android instrumentation work

Sensors HAL. Context Hub Runtime Environment. Test Development Workflow. Instrumentation Tests. Native Tests. Android Test Station. Test Framework. VTS Dashboard. Lab Infrastructure. Getting Started. Testing with TF.

Through Tradefed. Through Suite. Developing TF. XML Configuration. Global Configuration. Advanced Concepts. Device Manager. Device setup. Evaluating Performance. Feature Implementation. They are slower than local tests, but on the other hand, we can execute them on multiple devices simultaneously. Such tests can be helpful when we have device-specific or Android OS version-specific issues in the application.

In this case, we can run test cases on different devices without any changes. The non-UI instrumentation test cases are usually used for verification of Android-specific components, like a database.

First of all, we need to generate two applications, which will be installed on a device or emulator later on. This is the application we are developing and a test application that includes all test cases that should be executed on the device or emulator.

When both apps are installed on the device, the test application will interact with the dev application via Instrumentation API, which is a part of Android ROM. We have multiple ways of running instrumentation tests in the Android project. If you are familiar with different ways of running local tests, I recommend moving to the "Instrumentation tests: Use Cases" section. If a module supports multiple build flavors, we can use the connectedVariantNameAndroidTest. As we discussed before, we need to have a "dev app" and "test app" to test them on the device.

Instrumentation test cases are often used to verify interaction with Android-specific components, like databases, User Interfaces UI , etc. Let's take a look at different use cases, which we can verify with instrumentation test cases. I want to start with a specific SQLite database in Android. This means that you can have a situation in which everything is working properly on one device, but on the other one, you have a problem because of the database version.

Fortunately, this happens rarely, and all essential SQL commands work well on all devices. So, let's imagine a situation where we want to store a User infomation in the database. Note: In this example, we will store User information in one table for simplicity.

Let's take a look at the instrumentation UI test case. I propose to create a similar UI test case as we created with the Robolectric framework. Note: As you can see this test case is fully similar to Robolectric test case.

We can store such test case in a shared folder and have the possibility to execute them as local or instrumentation tests without code changes. Read more about this here. The local tests are executed on local JVM Java Virtual Machine ; this means that we don't need a specific device or emulation, but we can only verify our application on one ROM like a particular device.

These test cases are much faster than instrumentation test cases. The instrumentation tests require a specific device or emulator, and we can execute such test cases on different devices simultaneously. They are slower than local tests because we need to install two applications on the device or emulator the application and test application, including all test cases.

In the end, we need to download test data from the device to our workstation. I also want to mention some limitations of UI tests with the Robolectric framework. We can use basic verification, but Robolectric has a problem with gestures, navigation drawable, etc. Alex Zhukovich - December 18, Overview In the Android world, we have different types of test cases, which allow us to test both Android-specific code and Android independent code.

Types of Android tests There are Local and Instrumentation test cases. Local tests in details Let's talk a bit more about local tests. After passing the custom state model that is going to render UI, we are validating our views visibility work as we expect with the help of the espresso methods. Now you can run the test and it will run on a Emulator or your phone if is connected.

We know that our repository works as we expected, we know that our views are being draw correctly when a given state is passed. If that is your case, please follow the instructions on this blog in order to create a shared test directory. The project can be found here. If you want to ask me something DM me and I will get you back as soon as I can. Sign in.

Submit Archive About Events droidcon. Christopher Elias Follow. ProAndroidDev Follow. Written by Christopher Elias Follow. More From Medium. Abhishek Srivastava. Creating Rewarded Video Ads in Unity. Hernando Nieto Jaramillo. Android To Mac Transfer App.