A GUI TESTING STRATEGY AND TOOL FOR ANDROID APPS

Abstract

The increasing popularity of Android and the GUI-driven nature of its apps have motivated the need for applicable automated GUI testing techniques. This paper presents a proposed strategy and a supporting tool for GUI testing of Android apps. The strategy employs a model-based approach to capture the event-driven nature of Android apps. It includes two phases: Modeling Phase and Test Evaluation Phase. In the modeling phase, an event sequence diagram (ESD) is created for each activity in the app under test (AUT), which depicts its events and possible transitions between them, and used to generate event sequences (test cases). In the test evaluation phase, certain event-based coverage criteria are employed to measure the adequacy of the generated test cases. The proposed tool analyses the AUT, creates an ESD for each activity, and generates event sequences. It handles the event sequences explosion problem and ensures the event sequences feasibility. For each event sequence, the tool generates a test script and a corresponding Robotium test class, adds it to the AUT and executes it. The paper also presents a case study that illustrates the use of the proposed strategy and tool for testing a simple Android app.