Scriptless GUI Testing on Mobile Applications

Abstract

Traditionally, end-to-end testing of mobile apps is either performed manually or automated with test scripts. However, manual GUI testing is expensive and slow, and test scripts are fragile for GUI changes, resulting in high maintenance costs. Scriptless testing attempts to address the costs associated with GUI testing. Existing scriptless approaches for mobile testing do not seem to fit the requirements of the industry, specifically those of the ING. This study presents an extension to open source TESTAR tool to support scriptless GUI testing of Android and iOS applications. We present an initial validation of the tool on an industrial setting at the ING. From the validation, we determine that the extended TESTAR outperforms two other state-of-the-art scriptless testing tools for Android in terms of code coverage, and achieves similar performance as the scripted test automation already in use at the ING. Moreover, we see that the scriptless approach covers parts of the application under test that the existing test scripts did not cover, showing the complementarity of the approaches, providing more value for the testers.