An example using UI Automator for testing Android applications. I used the Api Demos application as subject to be tested. This application is packaged within any image distributed from Genymotion. I created this sample application to demonstrate UiAutomator to a colleague. My personal findings are attached below.
##Running project with attached jar
adb push /Path/to/git/folder/UiAutomatorExample.jar /data/local/tmp
adb shell uiautomator runtest UiAutomatorExample.jar -c com.tobrun.android.test.uiautomator.ApiDemosTest
##Build the project from source ###Dependencies First add the following dependencies to the project:
JUnit 3
uiautomator.jar
android.jar
###Build project Generate an Ant build file, and compile it with ant
./android create uitest-project -n UiAutomatorExample -t 1 -p /Users/path/to/workspace/project
ant build
###Running project Copy the jar to the SD-card and run the test
adb push bin/UiAutomatorExample.jar /data/local/tmp
adb shell uiautomator runtest UiAutomatorExample.jar -c com.tobrun.android.test.uiautomator.ApiDemosTest
##Personal findings ###Test engineer If you are a test engineer, UiAutomator is the perfect tool to test Android applications. It requires a very small amount of Java and Android knowledge to program. The syntax/funcionalities are limited, but it we be enough to perform the typical "bussiness-as-usual" tests.
###Developer In comparison to other testing frameworks, indepth tests are harder to write and don't allow the developer doing TDD. In UiAutomator you use UiSelectors to search for UiObjets. This selector is based on the View's text and content description. The problem is that you can't reference the Views directly. You can only invoke a simplified set of methods on an UiObject. But their are some upsides to this framework, you can leave your app sandbox and do all kind of stuff. For example: toggle on/off wifi, open other apps, test your activity for result, etc..
Another upside is the usage of UiWatcher, this watcher listens to conditional events (primarely being ui changes e.g. warning dialog popping up). This allows you to easily incoperate a whole set of different scenario's within one testcase. I didn't incorperate any examples of UiWatcher in this sample but they are easily configured.
Use UiAutomator only for specific tests and only if can't perform those tests with your favorable testing framework.