Appium Workshop: From Intermediate to Advanced in Two Days

I and a few other colleagues from HeadSpin were fortunate enough to attend the first Appium Pro workshop. Held in San Francisco on February 10 and 11, this two-day workshop gave me a great opportunity to strengthen my Appium skillset. If you’re interested in enhancing your Appium expertise, be sure to visit the Appium Pro workshop page. Read on to hear some of the highlights from the event and get more information on what was covered.

Workshops Led by Jonathan Lipps, Author of the Appium Pro Newsletter

If you’re interested in learning about Appium, it’s hard to imagine having a better instructor than the one we had. The workshop was led by Jonathan Lipps, the project lead for Appium. Jonathan is the founder of Cloud Grey, a premier Appium consultancy, and the author of Appium Pro, a weekly Appium newsletter. We were also treated to a special guest presentation from Jason Huggins, the original developer of Selenium, who provided a presentation and demonstration on automating mobile phones.

Agenda Packed with Advanced Topics

The workshop started with an introduction to the basic approaches and architecture behind Appium. Over the session, we covered a number of advanced techniques, including test suite design, element locator strategies, performance testing, image-based and visual testing, and best practices for testing in the cloud. Our team at HeadSpin was able to provide attendees with the devices that were used in the cloud testing portion of the workshop.

The workshop also offered an exploration of Appium’s advanced drivers. Jonathan provided an informative overview of how visual testing can be used to compare the difference between two screens to detect visual errors. The test suite design section offered some practical guidance for designing scalable and clean testing frameworks. We also received great input on debugging, and insights into how users can get invaluable assistance from the Appium community by creating issues in the Appium GitHub site.

The workshop also offered us insights for improving existing Appium tests, outlining approaches for improving test speed, reliability, and design. Additionally, Jonathan gave pointers for contending with tricky-to-find elements and he offered strategies for troubleshooting and fixing errors when things go wrong.

Interactive, Collaborative, and Hands-on

The workshop featured a lot of opportunities to do hands-on work on code samples. The workshop was very personalized. We were able to vote on topics we were most interested in. We were also able to ask questions throughout the workshop. The agenda also offered breaks for meals and snacks, which afforded us a lot of opportunities to interact with Jonathan and our fellow attendees.

Learn More

These workshops offer a great way to learn more about Appium, gain hands-on experience, and hear directly from experts and peers on the latest strategies and ideas. To learn more about these workshops, be sure to visit the Appium Pro workshop page. Also, be sure to check out the Appium Pro newsletter to stay on top of the latest Appium news.

FAQs

1. What are the prerequisites for using Appium?

Prerequisites for using Appium are:

• ANDROID Development Kit

• JDK

• TestNG

• Eclipse

• The Selenium Server JAR file

• Library for Webdriver Language Binding

• APPIUM for Microsoft Windows

• APK Application Information on Google Play

• js

2. What are the capabilities of Appium?

Appium capabilities include:

• It supports web testing

• It supports cross-platform mobile automation for native and hybrid applications

• JSON wire protocol support

• It does not require App recompilation

• Supports test automation on both physical device and simulator or emulator 

• No dependency on mobile devices

3. What tools, frameworks, and modules is Appium compatible with?

• Appium is compatible with numerous testing tools such as Selenium Webdriver.
• It is compatible with many unit test frameworks, including NUnit and.Net.
• Appium provides the necessary driver module for writing test cases.

4. Why should we use Appium? Mention some of its benefits.

Appium has numerous advantages, such as:

• It is a multi-mobile platform enabler for app testing.
• It facilitates you to pick the programming language with which you are most comfortable.
• It is free, open-source, and backed by a vast community of developers.
• It supports JSON wire and Selenium protocol to facilitate testing.
• It does not necessitate you to modify your application.
• You can begin to scale the tests as you progress.
• It is entirely independent of mobile devices.
• It permits testing on both physical and virtual devices.