Real Time Mobile UI Inspector - Alternative with Appium Inspector

Seong JuWon — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 10:53:59 +0000

When it comes to automating end-to-end testing for mobile apps, several widely used frameworks come to mind, including Appium, Espresso, XCTest, Robotium, and more. Appium stands out among them due to its unique advantage of supporting both Android and iOS platforms, making it a popular choice among developers. Moreover, Appium has introduced the Appium Inspector for desktop apps, which greatly enhances convenience by providing an easy way to identify UI elements on the device screen and enabling the creation of test scripts.

Even Dogu, which has recently transitioned to open source, allows app testing using Appium. In this article, I will have a direct experience and briefly compare the Dogu Inspector, one of the features to be added in the upcoming update version 1.1.0, with the Appium Inspector!

Dogu Inspector: https://github.com/dogu-team/dogu
Appium Inspector: https://github.com/appium/appium-inspector

Dogu Inspector

The Dogu Inspector enables real-time identification of UI elements within the device screen through the use of WebRTC technology on a web browser.

Adventages

Game UI Support

If your game project includes Gamium, Dogu Inspector allows you to switch to the Gamium context, regardless of the device platform, and browse game UI elements. This seems to be a necessary feature for game automation.

No Distance Limitation with Devices

Dogu provides device farm functionality, allowing management of devices through a web browser and real-time screen streaming or remote control, even when the physical distance between the devices and the user is significant. The Dogu Inspector can be used without the device being physically nearby.

Easy Device Remote Control

You can interact with the device screen by touching or dragging as if using the actual device, using the mouse on the streaming screen. Furthermore, key inputs can also be sent as if using a physical keyboard, making it easy to manipulate the device.

Low Learning Curve

Although Dogu Inspector internally utilizes Appium, users can use the Inspector without any knowledge of Appium. Therefore, if the device is connected to Dogu without the need for configuring Appium capabilities, Appium server, etc., you can immediately use the Inspector.

Drawbacks

iOS Initial Setup

When installing Dost on macOS, there is a part where you need to manually perform initial setup for connecting iOS devices to the Dogu device farm, following the instructions provided. It would be great to improve this process, making it easier to use iOS devices after completing Signing & Build using XCode. (This aspect of Apple's setup is always a bit disappointing.. 🥲)

UI Tree View UI/UX

The Dogu Inspector also has a tree view for displaying UI elements on the device, but there are still many areas that need improvement. Transforming the UI like XML format and further enhancing the functionality during Inspector usage would be beneficial.

Appium Inspector

Appium Inspector allows capturing the device screen on a desktop app and provides the ability to analyze the UI.

Advantages

Recording and Script Generation

Appium Inspector offers a recording feature that allows you to browse the UI, interact with the device, and generate scripts automatically. It supports various languages such as JavaScript, Python, etc., making it easy and fast to create scripts.

Easy iOS Setup

To use an iOS device, you can start right away with just the XCode Team ID. By adding it to the Appium capabilities and starting a session, the app will be built, installed, and launched. Since the Inspector functionality is the main focus, it was relatively easier to get started compared to Dogu Inspector.

Various Device Commands

The Command menu provides many functionalities. Although the supported features may vary slightly across platforms, there are capabilities to uninstall apps, open apps, manipulate network menus, transfer files, and more.

Drawbacks

Learning Curve

When I initially tried to use Appium Inspector, I found myself reading a lot of Appium documentation and troubleshooting articles related to environment variables. I also had some experiences where the Inspector did not function correctly due to incorrect Capabilities input, causing it to misunderstand UI elements. Using Appium Inspector requires a bit of study and understanding of Appium.

Challenging UX for Device Remote Control

Performing actions like touching or dragging on the device screen required pressing certain buttons before execution. Similarly, sending key inputs required selecting UI elements, entering input in the input field, and pressing the send button. These steps felt cumbersome in the user experience.

Summary

Wrapped up

After trying and summarizing the two inspectors briefly, Dogu Inspector has the advantages of supporting game apps, having a low learning curve, and no limitation on device distance. On the other hand, Appium Inspector has advantages such as recording and scripting capabilities and various device commands.

As expected, Appium, being an open-source project with long-term maintenance, offers many convenient and excellent features like recording and various device control commands. We, at Dogu, should continue updating and filling the gaps in features that are not yet supported in the Appium Inspector, taking them as benchmarks for improvement.

Dogu Inspector: https://github.com/dogu-team/dogu
Appium Inspector: https://github.com/appium/appium-inspector

All In One Test Automation Infra - Open-Source

Seong JuWon — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 07:19:55 +0000

Have you ever used following these infra tools for test automation?

Selenium Grid
Open STF
Appium Inspector
Jenkins

Combining infra tools for test automation is complicated and decentralized so it makes hard to maintain infra.
Also decentralized tools make users confuse and decrease productivity.

Services such as Browser Stack solve this problem, but since they only support cloud services, there is a problem that is impossible with an on-premise method.

So, I am developing All In One solution - Dogu

What is Dogu

Dogu provides device farm, workflow, test report for test automation based on web.
If you use Dogu then you don't need to set up platform like jenkins, device farm, test report for test automation and can focus on your test with Dogu.

Why Dogu

It needs so many time and effort to build and maintain infrastructure like Appium, OpenSTF, Jenkins, Grafana for test automation. Dogu provides integrated platform for these infrastructure and helps you to focus on test automation.
Especially, Dogu is tightly integrated with test script and test framework so that you can focus on test automation without developing infrastructure related works like parallel test execution, data transfer for test report.

Dogu Provides following features now

device farm

Manage device farm through dashboard
Control host and device remotely
Support many platform devices (Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS)

UI Inspector

Inspect native UI
Inspect UI of game developed by Unity Engine

Workflow

Run test script on tartgeted multiple devices
Integrate workflow with your CI/CD like Jenkins, Github Action (Not yet supported)
Import test script from Gitlab, Github (Not yet supported)
Parallel test execution

Test Report

Visualized test result (test unit)
Recorded video
Profiled device (memory, cpu, fps)
Log (test script, device, application)

Test Script Execution Flow

Uploaded Test Script Execution By Workflow

Dogu Agent helps you to run test script on your device farm. Especially, Dogu Agent is tightly integrated with test script and test framework so that you can focus on test automation without developing infrastructure related works like, target device for test execution, parallel test execution, pulling test script.

Local Test Script Excution By Relay Hub

In contrast to uploaded test script execution, you can run test script existing in local through relay hub on device farm

Roadmap

Currently, only device farm functions are supported, but in the future, Test Framework and Test Unit Framework will be integrated with Dogu to be used.

The integrating frameworks are as follows.

Test Framework

Browser

Selenium
Playwright
Puppeteer
Cypress
Webdriverio

Mobile

Appium
Webdriverio

Game

Gamium

Test Unit Framework

Jest
Pytest
TestNG

Open Source

Dogu is open source under licensed AGPL v3.0. also provides self-hosted docker image.

See more detail on Github and join us on our Discordchannel for questions, discussions, and to meet the rest of the community!

DEV Community: Seong JuWon

Real Time Mobile UI Inspector - Alternative with Appium Inspector

Dogu Inspector

Adventages

Game UI Support

No Distance Limitation with Devices

Easy Device Remote Control

Low Learning Curve

Drawbacks

iOS Initial Setup

UI Tree View UI/UX

Appium Inspector

Advantages

Recording and Script Generation

Easy iOS Setup

Various Device Commands

Drawbacks

Learning Curve

Challenging UX for Device Remote Control

Summary

Wrapped up

All In One Test Automation Infra - Open-Source

What is Dogu

Why Dogu

Dogu Provides following features now

device farm

UI Inspector

Workflow

Test Report

Test Script Execution Flow

Uploaded Test Script Execution By Workflow

Local Test Script Excution By Relay Hub

Roadmap

Test Framework

Browser

Mobile

Game

Test Unit Framework

Open Source