Bianor Blog

How to Do Automation Testing of iPhone Applications

May 13, 2010

Why automation? It saves precious time spent in running manually one and the same tests over and over again with each new build of the application. And secondly, it improves the stability of the application and decreases regression bugs by making it easy to run tests after each non-trivial code change or even at the end of each development day.

How about automation testing of mobile applications? Well, this area has always been foggy.

There are lot of tools for web application testing and some of them could fit automation testing of mobile applications either independently, or with an extension. For example, you could use M-eux Test as an extension on top of HP’s Quick Test Professional (QTP). M-eux Test recognizes and activates the GUI objects on the screen of the mobile device while utilizing best automation testing practices already incorporated into QTP. The restriction of M-eux Test comes from the lack of supported OSs – in fact, it supports only Windows Mobile apps (6.x and 5.0 Mobile PC).

What happens if you want to test an iPhone app? Recently Gorilla Logic, an enterprise IT consulting services company has launched free functional testing tool for iPhone apps named FoneMonkey. It provides the ability to capture, edit, and replay user interface tests on iPhone, thus covering the functionality of an iPhone app with automation tests.

Further, FoneMonkey provides options for integrated script editing while playing a recorded scenario, and modifiable assertion checks. Sounds familiar?

I think FoneMonkey will quickly become a standard for iPhone test automation. Besides, the people from Gorilla Logic are handling issues and change requests in no time, there is an extensive and easy-to-follow documentation, and a dedicated forum hosted by the company. If you are into the mobile application development business, I could highly recommend you the tool!

Author: Vasil Tabakov
Category: Mobile Software Development
Tags: iPhone, product review, tools
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8 comments

1. June 19, 2010 1:07 am
   Hiral says:

   Thank a lot , this has really been helpful.

   Hiral

2. June 21, 2010 4:41 am
   Vasil Tabakov says:

   Hi Hiral,

   I am glad that you liked this post. If you need any help with the mentioned tools, I’ll be willing to help -just drop me a mail: vasil.tabakov[at] bianor.com
   Good Luck!

   Best Wishes,
   Vasil

3. July 7, 2010 7:29 am
   Sharan says:

   Hi Vasil,

   Your mail is very helpful for me.Is this tool supports ipad application? and can u tell me which xcode version it will supports?.

4. July 7, 2010 10:24 am
   Vasil Tabakov says:

   Hi Sharan,
   I am glad that it was helpful.
   On the iPad question, the short answer is that the gorillalogic guys are still working on incorporating FoneMonkey for iPad, and there are some issues with the setup. i.e it is not intuitive. You could use the following forum threads for configuration:
   http://www.gorillalogic.com/forumpost/1008
   http://www.gorillalogic.com/forumpost/972
   Currently we are working with the latest xcode version 3.2.3, and haven’t tried it with the older ones. Of course, you could always take the latest one for free from developer.apple.com Good Luck!

5. May 11, 2011 10:59 pm
   Chris Wang says:

   Thanks for the article.
   Right now I’m just finding automation solutions for my Iphone app.

6. December 8, 2011 7:58 am
   Omer says:

   Vasil, your article is really good and thanks for sharing it. Can you please email the material that can be helpful for me to start this tool as I am newbie.

7. January 20, 2012 10:01 am
   Viktor says:

   Hi Vasil,

   i just read you article and briefly checked gorila’s web site.

   I will need test a lot on iphone, ipod and ipad. My question is if i would be able for example about 100 test cases in a row. So I will not have to check the progress.

   Thanks for the article and answer,

   Viktor

8. January 27, 2012 9:24 am
   Vasil Tabakov says:

   Viktor, you can invoke a native script from Objective-C using the playFile: method, and in this way run multiple scripts in sequence. See here for more details: http://www.gorillalogic.com/books/fonemonkey/understanding-generated-objective-c-code

   Omer, all I’ve learned for FoneMonkey is from here: http://www.gorillalogic.com/books/fonemonkey-docs/home and the forum: http://www.gorillalogic.com/forums/fonemonkey-ios