Appium Vs. Robotium - a Simple Comparison

An enterprise has to focus on several factors to effectively automate its mobile testing activities. It is also important for the business to compare the available automation tools, and pick the right one according to the specific needs of the project. Many businesses even prefer using open source tools to effectuate automated testing of mobile apps without increasing project overheads. Both Appium and Robotium are open source testing frameworks that are used widely by enterprises across the world.

Appium Automation Framework

As an open source framework, Appium is used widely by testers to create automated tests for major mobile platforms. The cross-platform test automation tool supports a variety of platforms including Android, iOS and FirefoxOS. Likewise, Appium can also be used for testing native, hybrid and mobile web applications. It runs tests by using a WebDriver interface. So the testers have option to write test cases in number of programming languages included in the WebDriver library including C#, PHP, Java, Python and Ruby.

Robotium Android Testing Tools

As an open source automated testing tool, Robotium is used frequently to evaluate a variety of Android applications. It is popularly regarded by programmers as the “Selenium for Android”. The UI testing tool further supports major versions and subversions of the Google mobile operating system. Robotium is actually a library of unit tests. While user Robotium for testing Android application, testers are required to test cases in Java.

Important Points of Distinction between Appium and Robotium

Support for Mobile Platforms: Appium is a cross-platform test automation tool, whereas Robotium is a test automation framework for Android. Robotium supports different versions and subversions of the Google mobile operating system. So it can be used for testing a wide variety of Android apps. On the other hand, Appium supports iOS and Firefox OS along with Android. It allows testers to use of standard automation APIs on different platforms. The standard automation APIs do not require the mobile apps to be modified or recompiled during testing.

Type of Application: Robotium can be used for evaluating both native and hybrid mobile applications for Android. But Appium can be used to test mobile web apps along with the native and hybrid mobile applications. It can also be used by testers to control Chrome and Safari on mobile devices. So Appium can also be used to evaluate mobile websites across these web browsers.

Option to Choose Programming Language: Robotium is designed specifically to test software for a specific mobile platform. So it does not allow testers to write test cases by choosing from a set of programming languages. While using Robotium for Android application testing, the testers are required to write test cases only in Java. But Appium is designed with a WebDriver interface that supports several programming languages. Thus, Appium enables testers to write test cases in any of the WebDriver-compatible languages including Java, PHP, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl, Objective-C, Clojure, and JavaScript with Node.js.

Performance: Both Appium and Robotium lack Record and Play functionality. But Robotium requires testing professionals to work with the source code while automating tests. So testers have to invest additional time and efforts to write test cases for Robotium. Further, the Android application testing framework cannot effectively interact with system software, and does not provide screenshots. At the same time, the performance of Appium is impacted due to reduced XPath support on mobile devices. Also, many testing professionals feel the test reports generated by Appium to be poor and inadequate.

In nutshell, a business can use Appium to test a wide variety of mobile applications, whereas Robotium can be used for testing only Android app. But a business must evaluate the pros and cons of these open source mobile testing frameworks according to the requirements of the application to be tested. To develop a stable product/application, please look out for the testing experts from a reputed quality assurance testing company.

We provide Appium Testing services. If you would like to talk one of our Appium tool experts, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Robotium - A better choice amongst all other Android Automation tool

Android application developers find it extremely important to ensure that only a thoroughly tested Android app gets released in the market. With so many different devices running a variety of potential version of Android OS, it may become particularly difficult to make sure that the app is running properly on every device. Nevertheless, it is important that the users find the app smooth and give lots of stars to generate downloads. Thorough unit testing is trusted by many software developers for that. There are many places that have an amount of unit testing but implementation is quite an important step as well, so that they can ensure that the app is functioning just the way they expect it to. The unit tests must be written early on so that you plan the objects while coding; it also forces the resolution of ambiguities.

Another Android automation tool often used is MonkeyRunner which uses a Python implementation in Java, known as Jython for walking through the applications. It is best used when you want to walk through multiple emulators or devices. Its approach is not based on pass or fail testing; rather it walks through the application and clicks on buttons to take screenshots throughout, at designated points. After the running of the script, the screenshots can be compared with the ones that you had expected to see to find out the problems. This is a very easy approach but its main problem is its lack of a tight UI integration.

There are several other evaluation tools but amongst the various Android Automation tools, the most loved as well as trusted is the Robotium. This test framework is meant for the creation of easily written, robust as well as powerful automatic test cases for applications. Robotium helps test case developers write functions, acceptance and system test scenarios that cover multiple Android activities. By virtue of this, further details related to the implemented classes or structure of Android apps are not needed by test developers. The main class name along with the path linking it, are all that is needed. Full support is provided by it for the testing of hybrid as well as native applications.

Installing as well as using Robotium is extremely easy. It can be downloaded as single JAR file and then placed in whichever folder you want. To use it, you only have to put the JAR in the test project's classpath. Several differently build automation tools can use it. In fact, it may be used for both application testing with the source code available as well as for applications where just apk is available. To use it, just create Android test project to add test class.

Robotium usage has the following benefits as well as features:

• Powerful tests cases can be quickly written even with very little information about the application that you will be testing.
• APIs are offered so that direct interaction can be done with UI controls in the application.
• Android 1.6 as well as above versions are officially supported by it.
• Robotium does not modify the Android platform.
• Command prompt may be used for the execution of the test.
• Smooth integration of the framework may be done with Ant or Maven, helping in the addition of the framework to build the automation process of the project.
• Screenshots may be captured as well.
• There is no need for source code.
• Other measurement tools for code coverage like Emma and Cobertura can work with this.
• Quick implementation can be done.
• The test case can be read prominently when compared to other tests.

Robotium testing may also have certain shortcomings but despite those, the list of benefits is quite lengthy, making it a much-loved automation testing tool. Currently, it can be said to be the best Automation Testing Framework with many open source developers contributing to the introduction of many newer as well as better features in it to enrich the user experience even further. Android testing with Robotium can be executed with a customizable framework based on clients’ needs.

We provide Android automation testing services. If you would like to get your application tested by our certified Robotium testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.