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Introduction to appium 📱

What is appium?📱

  • Open source library to drive mobile apps (native, hybrid and mobile web apps on platforms like Android, iOS and desktop and many more 🚀)
  • Choose language binding of your choice (Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, C# ... 🆓)
  • Does not reinvent the wheel and wraps automation libraries (Google UI Automator2/Espresso, Apple XCUITest/UIAutomation, Windows WinApp)
  • No requirement of SDK or recompilation of the app
  • Compliant with Web driver protocol
  • Works on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Core concepts

  • Client server architecture
  • Session
  • Desired capabilities
  • Appium Server
  • Appium Clients
  • Appium Desktop

Appium request flow

Client server

Appium is a web server that exposes REST APIs

Typical request flow

  • Server receives connection from client
  • Server listens for commands
  • Client makes a request to Server which gets executed on device
  • Server returns an HTTP response

Session

  • Each action happens within a sessions context
  • We start a session with a Desired capabilities object to specify the type of connection we want

Desired capabilities

  • Hash map with key being different capabilities and values with specific configurations

Appium Server

  • Node.js server that bridges commands to native frameworks from vendors (Google, Apple)

Appium Clients

  • Clients that adhere to WebDriver protocol and exposes actions
  • Test code uses these clients to perform desired actions on devices

Appium Desktop

  • Desktop app to support identifying elements and aid writing automated tests

References