Are you having trouble with Selenium mobile testing? Don’t worry! We are here for you. Our article will help you understand the best practices for automating mobile apps with Selenium. We will also ensure that our strategy is focused on enhancing the efficiency, accuracy, and overall test coverage.

Do you know the importance of mobile devices in the current web? More than 50% of total online traffic comes from these devices. So, it is very important to adopt a mobile-first development practice to ensure the quality of mobile apps through robust testing.

Selenium rose to be one of the crown bearers in the segment of web-app testing. It also has excellent capabilities when it comes to mobile web app testing. So, developers can use these qualities of Selenium to ensure the proper functioning of their web apps on a huge range of mobile devices.

Challenges of Mobile Testing

Mobile apps come with a massive set of challenges. Some of the major ones include device fragmentation, multiple operating systems, and varying screen sizes. Moreover, all these challenges can have a significant impact on the overall performance of all web applications.

So, by automating the testing process for these apps on multiple mobile devices, you can make sure that all the functions work properly across a diverse range of devices. You should also remember that the ultimate goal of this process is to improve the overall user experience for your customers.

It will be a great choice to connect Selenium with tools like Appium. This approach will extend Selenium’s capabilities beyond web-based apps to mobile apps as well. This integration will also allow the testers to automate both native and hybrid mobile applications.

Reasons To Automate Mobile Testing

Before we start discussing the best practices for initiating Selenium mobile testing, let us go through some of the major reasons that justify the automation of mobile test cases:

  • We are all aware that automated tests will run faster and more frequently compared to manual test suites. This inclusion will make it very easy for testers to perform repetitive test cases like regression testing.
  • Implementing test automation on multiple devices, operating systems, and environments will help the testers to improve the scalability of the testing infrastructure. It is also possible to ensure that there is at least one dedicated test case for every element present in the application.
  • The final benefit is the implementation of testing consistency. This is because by using automation testing, the testers can massively reduce the margin of human error, which will, in turn, ensure more reliable test results even after multiple runs.

The Role of Appium in Selenium Mobile Testing

Although Selenium is a very powerful tool for web automation testing, the main credit should go to Appium. This is because only after using the capabilities of Appium, Selenium can extend its potential to mobile devices. At its core, Appium is an open-source tool to automate multiple types of mobile apps, like native, web, and hybrid apps.

Appium also uses a single API to execute the test cases on multiple mobile platforms like iOS, Windows, and Android. Using this, the testers can also write the automation test scripts using the WebDriver protocol. This inclusion makes it a very natural extension for Selenium users who want to try their hands in mobile web app testing as well.

Reasons To Choose Appium

Now, you might be worried that even with multiple options for mobile app testing in the open market, why have we chosen Appium for this task? Let us justify our choice with the following reasons:

  • Appium allows you to write the test scripts once and run them on multiple platforms like iOS and Android. This means that you can completely eliminate the hassle of rewriting every test case after multiple application iterations.
  • Using Appium, you can write the test scripts in multiple programming languages, including the popular options like Python and Java. This helps you to eliminate the hassle of going through the learning curve for a new programming language just for one tool.
  • Finally, Appium doesn’t require you to modify or recompile your application for running the test scripts. This means that you can implement real-world test scenarios while using this tool.

Common Challenges of Selenium Mobile Testing

One final thing that we must consider before understanding the best practices for Selenium mobile testing is the common challenges that you will face in this process. Using this information, you can prepare yourself beforehand to avoid any unwanted surprises during the test execution process:

Device Fragmentation

With thousands of iOS and Android devices currently available, it becomes almost impossible to physically test your application on every device. So, we advise the testers to focus on testing the most popular devices while using a cloud-based device farm to supplement the others.

By implementing this process, you can not only expand your overall test coverage but also stay within the budget constraints of your company.

Test Maintenance

As we all know, mobile applications go through a frequent series of updates. These updates can break the tests due to the addition of new features or the removal of existing ones. The testers must modernize the test code and use POM to reduce the efforts required for maintaining tests after every code change.

Handling Permissions

Most of the current mobile applications often require multiple user permissions like camera and location to function properly. The testers must use Appium for simulating user interactions with these permission dialogs. This practice will help ensure the app behaves correctly when permissions are granted or denied as per the user preferences.

Best Practices for Mobile Test Automation

Based on our research and understanding, we have created a list of some of the best practices that we recommend to incorporate in mobile test automation with Selenium and Appium:

Choose the Right Devices for Testing

Before beginning the testing process, we strongly recommend the testers to have a clear idea about their target devices. This list of your target devices will be primarily controlled by your audience base. In case you are a new developer or organization, it is a safe practice to target the most common devices that’re currently available in the market.

It is also important to maintain a wide range of configurations in terms of hardware, operating systems, and screen resolutions. This will make sure that you have covered almost all segments of the current mobile industry. It is also important to prioritize the testing on certain mobile devices that have a larger audience base.

Leverage Cloud-Based Device Farms

As we already mentioned earlier, it is not only an expensive but also a time consuming process to set up and maintain an in-house mobile device lab. The perfect substitute for this process is the inclusion of remote device labs with the help of modern cloud-based platforms.

To further improve our understanding in this regard, we can consider the example of LambdaTest as our reference:

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you perform manual and automation testing at scale with over 3000 real devices, browsers, and OS combinations. A mobile site tester can also use this massive device farm to verify the functioning of their apps on legacy devices and browser versions that are no longer available in the current market.

This platform will also assist in your debugging processes as it will automatically generate a comprehensive test report after completing the entire test suite. This report will provide you with multiple screenshots and videos of the bugs and errors. So, you can use this information to easily pinpoint the faulty element and perform the required actions.

Prioritize Cross-Platform Testing

To ensure the proper functioning of cross-platform applications, you have to test them on both Android and iOS devices. To implement this process, you can utilize Appium’s cross-platform support. This will allow you to write a single test script for both operating systems. This implementation will help you to minimize the redundancy and maximize the test coverage.

It is also wise to include automation testing with cross-platform testing so that the system can automatically initiate the test scripts whenever it detects any change within the app’s core framework.

Efficient Test Script Management

Mobile applications can change massively depending on their versions. So, the tests must be adaptable to these changes in order to uphold their efficiency. Let us shift our attention towards some of the tips that the developers can implement in this process for ensuring efficient test script management:

  • The first step is to break the test into small reusable functions for easy maintenance and tracking.
  • Next, you must use data-driven approaches to test multiple scenarios within a single script. You can essentially perform this process by feeding different input data within these scenarios.
  • The final approach is to implement Page Object Models for separating the test logic from user interface elements. This approach will make sure that changes within the UI require minimal changes to the original test scripts.

Testing for Network Variability

It is important to test the mobile apps under various network conditions. The tests should also include outdated network connections like 3G while incorporating the commonly used network options. You should also add scenarios like unstable bandwidth or high latency to understand the stability of your app.

Incorporating Real User Conditions

Mobile apps can be used by multiple users where various factors like battery levels, background apps, and locations can affect the overall performance. You must consider incorporating these scenarios within the test cases to ensure accurate representations of real-world conditions.

The Bottom Line

Based on all the factors that we analyzed in this article, we can safely say that Selenium mobile testing using Appium will offer a flexible and robust solution for automating mobile application testing. By following all the best practices that we mentioned in this article, you can achieve scalable, efficient, and reliable test automation processes.

It is also important to remember that mobile testing will continue to grow as an important part of user experience while remaining a fragmented landscape. By using the powers of Selenium and Appium, the teams can automate their mobile testing processes to reduce the time to market and improve the app’s quality.

Finally, with the growing market of mobile devices, it will become very important to adopt the above best practices to stay ahead of the competition and ensure that the mobile apps are ready for the challenges of today and even in the coming years.