Introduction
An efficient and versatile automated testing tool is the need of the hour in the application development industry. Automation reduces the developers’ time and effort exponentially by performing the monotonous, yet most important job of testing, with reference to the pre-defined benchmarks. It is clearly evident that automation streamlines the development activities and establishes a smooth and organized workflow. Testing is the most significant and critical part of the entire development process in the IT sector.
testing tools for mobile applications
Any web or mobile application is considered to be reliable only if it passes all the corner cases during the testing period. During the test period, bugs may be detected, or the time complexity and space complexity can run beyond the bars, or the system may crash. If these incidents had taken place after the app launch, the client base would have been reduced. Hence, we must never think of skipping the tests and running accurate and full-stretch tests to make sure that our system is efficient.
A wide chain of automated testing tools is available in the commercial market that allows us to check the efficiency, compatibility, and reliability of our web and mobile applications and generate a detailed report. The automated testing tools even generate test cases that we humans can’t even think of. Their capability to generate combinations and consider probability is proven to be higher than that of an average human being.
From the developer’s end, the most important part is to employ the correct tool. There are certain parameters that need to be considered; before choosing any testing tool for any particular application.
- Each tool comes with a specific set of features. Hence, sometimes just one tool is not sufficient for the thorough testing of an application.
- Painstaking research must be carried out about the software product that has to be tested.
- A checklist of the functionalities of the application that has to be tested via automated testing should be prepared before the initiation of the testing phase.
- If you have any dilemma or ambiguity with the report generation, you can always run a re-test on the same tool or opt for a back-up tool.
- We must learn about the installation procedure and the ecosystem of the testing tool that we are going to use.
- All the members involved in the project or the fund-raisers must be given a detailed presentation about the selected testing tool.
We have discussed the Top-7 automated testing tools for mobile and web applications below:
Calabash:
It is an open-source framework for automated testing of iOS as well as Android applications; it is developed and maintained by the Xamarin technologies. It is compatible with various programming languages, including .NET, Ruby, Flex, Java and more. It can also support the framework: Cucumber. Calabash comes with libraries that allow us to write automated acceptance tests that can interact with hybrid and native mobile applications and execute them.
Features:
- Calabash has two distinct libraries for iOS and Android automation; it has run tests on both hybrid and native applications.
- It comes with the support for Cucumber, which allows the testers to write tests and generate reports in simple English language. So, testers who are just beginners in programming or totally unfamiliar with coding concepts can also understand the reports.
- The Xamarin cloud service allows Calabash to access more than a thousand devices for firing tests.
Robotium:
If you are working with Android applications only, then Robotium is the most suitable tool for you. It is open-source frameworks that allow us to run automated tests on all the versions and subversions of Android. We can test any Android application, weather hybrid, or native using Robotium. The Robotium tests are written strictly in Java only. It becomes very handy to write solid automated black-box tests using it. The test scripts are generated and executed in JavaScript.
Features:
- Robotium executes parallel tests on multiple Android activities, hence consuming minimal time.
- You can create powerful test cases, even if you have an average knowledge of Java classes.
- Robotium is synchronous with Ant or Maven, which allows us to run tests as a component of continuous integration.
- We can even run tests on pre-installed mobile applications.
Monkey Talk:
It is an open-source testing framework that can run tests on both iOS and Android applications. The tool is divided into three segments, namely-the script, the IDE, and the operator. The test scripts of Monkey Talk are quite basic and highly understandable. Despite its simplicity, Monkey Talk has the potential to manage everything, from minor preliminary tests to solid data-driven test suits for native, hybrid, and web-based apps. Monkey Talk has the capability to support network devices, emulators and tethered devices.
Features:
- It gives the feature of creating interactive Android and ios application tests, which are rare in automated tools.
- It doesn’t require any prior scripting or programming experience.
- It comes with default support for Jenkins and Hudson libraries for providing continuous integration.
- It generates a report for XML as well as HTML codes; it even captures a snapshot of the screen when it encounters any bug.
Testdroid:
It is a cloud-based framework that primarily aims at the overall cost reduction of a software product, as well as the unforeseen expenses. It has a bucket of more than three hundred screen resolutions, hardware configurations, and OS versions. It allows the testers to access genuine Android devices for running tests remotely. It reduces the risk associated with the Agile business model significantly by allowing real-time testing. Testdroid can be used for gaining publicity, and improve the standards of customer review and rating.
Features:
- It ensures well-bound testing of mobile applications for Agile development.
- Reduce operational costs and other unpredictable expenses of the project.
- It improves the overall experience of every day dynamic clients and the average rating of the application.
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