Mobile Web Automation using Appium and important Desired Capabilities

     Mobile apps which are written in HTML/JS/CSS and deployed via a web server. Users access them by navigating to a URL in the mobile browser of their choice (e.g., Safari, Chrome).

    Appium enables you to automate any kind of app, across both iOS and Android platforms. The only difference is in how you set up the desired capabilities, and then in the commands you have access to once the session is started. An Appium-based mobile web test is just the same thing as a Selenium test! In fact, you can even use a standard Selenium client to speak to the Appium server and automate a mobile web app. The key is to use the browserName capability instead of the app capability. Appium will then take care of launching the specified browser and getting you automatically into the web context so you have access to all the regular Selenium methods you’re used to (like finding elements by CSS, navigating to URLs, etc…). Following are the important desired capabilities for mobile web application automation using appium,

Mobile Web Android
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.PLATFORM_NAME, “Android”);
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.DEVICE_NAME, “name of your test device”);
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.PLATFORM_VERSION, “OS version of your test device”);
capabilities.setCapability(“udid”, “UDID of your test device”);
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.BROWSER_NAME, “Chrome”);

Mobile Web iOS
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.PLATFORM_NAME, “iOS”);
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.DEVICE_NAME, “name of your test device”);
capabilities.setCapability(“udid”, “UDID of your test device”);
capabilities.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.BROWSER_NAME, MobileBrowserType.SAFARI);
capabilities.setCapability(“startIWDP”, true);
capabilities.setCapability(IOSMobileCapabilityType.START_IWDP, true);
capabilities.setCapability(“app”, “path of SAFAILAUNCHERAPPPATH”);
//SAFAILAUNCHERAPPPATH = “/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/appium-ios-driver/build/SafariLauncher/SafariLauncher.app”
capabilities.setCapability(“automationName”, “XCUITest”);
capabilities.setCapability(“realDeviceLogger”, “path of DEVICECONSOLEPATH”);
//DEVICECONSOLEPATH=”/usr/local/lib/node_modules/deviceconsole/deviceconsole”

     For running Safari tests on a real device, or hybrid tests on a real device, IWDP (ios-webkit-debug-proxy) must be installed on your system.

brew install ios-webkit-debug-proxy

Once you’ve got IWDP installed, you simply need to add capability to desired capability.

capabilities.setCapability(“startIWDP”, true);

     If you don’t include the startIWDP capability, you must run IWDP on your own via terminal and Appium will just assume it’s there listening for proxy requests. Once you set your Desired Capabilities, next need to instantiate the drivers for Android and iOS in the following way:

For Android
WebDriver driver;
driver = new AndroidDriver(new URL(“http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub”;), capabilities)

For iOS
WebDriver driver;
driver = new IOSDriver(new URL(“http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub”;), capabilities)

Try to use above mentioned Desired Capabilities in your automation scripts for mobile web automation.

make it perfect !