ARTS: Automated Remoted Testing System

ARTS - a system of remote access to the stand with Android and iOS devices: remote access to devices to demonstrate the applications’ performance; remote development and manual software testing; remote start automated testing.

ARTS benefits:

– Demonstration of the new functions of the application in real time on any of the devices from a remote stand without the need to have the right device at hand. It is enough to have a laptop with.

– A simple and convenient ARTS interface for interacting with a remote stand of devices does not require additional costs for training developers.

– Fine tuning of the system allows full manual testing of software on a remote device: from writing test cases to passing complex scenarios, taking into account the specifics of devices.

– Up to 70% of the volume of regression testing can be transferred to an automated system.

– It’s sufficient just a single specialist with an initial level of knowledge of any scripting language for daily analysis and maintaining the relevance of automated tests.

ARTS modes:

Remote Manual Testing

– Select the desired mode of interaction between Appium and remote devices for optimal system speed.

– Manual tests based on test cases and test scenarios.

– Selection of any available online device and interaction with it through the easy-to-use ARTS interface.

Automated Testing

– The sets of necessary tests are written in advance in any scripting language and are stored in the repository of the main server.

– Manual tests run via ARTS or on schedule. Startup settings are made via a Jenkins server.

– The standard mode of interaction between Appium and devices, during which ARTS collects all the information to uniquely identify interface elements and build the structure of the application.

– Testing is accompanied by careful process logging for Allure report building.

Possibilities:

– Access to devices from any company office anywhere in the world. The entire fleet of devices is in one place – always up to date and 100% functional.

– Receiving real-time (or the day after making changes, if automated testing took place at night)  information about defects that appear during development, improves the efficiency of error correction.

– The system provides access to all the functions of manual testing:
-to install, reinstall and remove the application;
-to control the application interface through swipes and tapas with the ability to fill the text fields;
-to take a screenshot, record video, remove logs and associate with a task in TFS.

ARTS functional design

– The Appium-server receives instructions from the main server of the system through the RESTful API and controls the behavior of mobile devices using the JSONWP protocol, which describes a set of standardized endpoints.

– Receiving a command to start testing on the selected device, Appium establishes a connection with a specific driver on this device and creates a WebDriver session.

– During an open session, the driver interacts with the iOS (XCUITest library) or Android (UIAutomator2 framework) platform internal tools, passing commands to manage the application interface elements and providing detailed information about the command results to the Appium server.

– Different ARTS modes use different level of detail of the data: in the Automated Testing mode full information is transmitted, in the demonstration mode, in order to maximize the response speed, the minimum required data is transmitted.

The solution is based on Appium client-server architecture: a modern open source tool for auto-testing mobile applications.