A Quick Glimpse at Appium Inspector’s Capabilities
In the realm of mobile app development, the pursuit of reliable functionality across various platforms is essential. Appium, an open-source automation tool, has become a cornerstone for developers and testers. At its core lies the Appium Inspector, a tool designed to simplify app inspection and interaction during testing.
Appium Inspector streamlines the inspection of mobile apps, offering a user-friendly interface for element analysis. It’s a crucial asset for creating and executing automation scripts efficiently.
Appium Inspector, a free and open-source tool, simplifies the inspection of native and hybrid mobile apps. Offering a user-friendly interface, users, even without coding knowledge, can select elements, input test data, and construct entire test flows effortlessly. This tool supports testing on both Android and iOS, providing a unified approach to multi-platform testing.
As an open-source solution, Appium Inspector is transparent and customizable, backed by a supportive community within the Appium ecosystem. It accommodates real device and emulator testing, allowing flexibility in automated test execution. The interface includes debugging tools for efficient issue resolution during test execution.
Clicking on a specific element within the mobile application triggers the Viewer Panel in Appium Inspector, revealing a comprehensive display of the chosen element within the app source area, along with its hierarchical structure. The attributes of this selected element are presented and utilized during the composition of test scripts. This functionality empowers testers and developers with a detailed understanding of the element’s positioning and relationships within the broader structure of the application.
For various reasons, an existing element might need to be located. In such instances, the ‘Search Element’ feature of Appium is utilized. When searching for the relevant element, the specific attribute based on which the search is conducted can be selected from the resulting popup. This allows the necessary search for the locator to be performed by choosing the attribute during the element search process.
Appium Inspector features enable us to perform operations such as tapping, sending keys, and executing swipes based on coordinates especially when utilizing a remote device or working with a simulator.
The Recorder option in Appium Inspector is an advanced feature designed to record actions performed within the Inspector window. Appium’s recorder sets itself apart by not just capturing actions but also translating them into the desired programming language syntax.
In summary, ensuring a robust process of obtaining elements and locators with Appium and Inspector requires making accurate locator strategy choices, verifying locator accuracy, and utilizing dynamic locators when necessary. Applying these techniques enables us to enhance the speed and efficiency of our testing processes.
Seda Ürgüplü
Software Test Automation Engineer