Once Helios is finally out 😀 we are now focusing on thinking about some great ideas to implement as new features in Sequoyah. One of them is an automation testing framework.
Currently, with all support available for smart phones and mobile devices, mobile applications are getting more and more complex. The complexity and effort necessary to test such applications and guarantee their quality grows in the same rate. In this scenario, we believe that it is interesting to have a tool that can help to simplify test activities. We know that there are lots of tools and frameworks already available out there, but our purpose is a little bit different. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel. We want a tool flexible enough, integrated to Eclipse and also language and platform agnostic. However, the focus here is to have a framework for test automation much more simple and easy to use.
The objective of this Automation Test Framework (we are still working on the name, suggestions are welcome 8) ) is to allow the creation of automated test cases in an easy way. Through an Eclipse view or editor, the user will be able to specify test requirements, purposes, steps and assertions written in a procedural language. Here, this procedural language is the key factor. As the name indicates, a procedure is a set of actions or steps, and each step of the test will be represented as a command. Sequoyah will provide extension points for commands and the user will be able to define and implement (if it is not already done) those commands. This way, it will be possible to write test cases for applications written in any language for any platform.
With the test defined, the user will be able to execute it via Launch Configurations that can be customized for different purposes. But the main point in the test execution will be the ability to execute actions that affect the test execution flow, i.e., it will be possible to stop the execution of the test and then resume it afterwards.
Gathering the test results is as important as testing. That’s why we are planing to provide ways to collect any test related information from percentage of passed and failed tests to test execution history and test evidences, including images, videos and log files.
We are pretty excited about this new component. If you are interested, check our web site. We’ll be publishing more info about this component soon!
UPDATE: We’ve just released an architecture proposal document for the Automation Test Framework in our website. Check it out here.
(Posted by Marcel Gorri)
Sequoyah Project's Blog 