UISpec vs. UIAutomation

[Matt Di Pasquale]

I'm just beginning iOS acceptance testing. I'm planning on trying on UIAutomation, or do you recommend I go with UISpec?

Thanks!

Matt

[Matthew Flint]

This is a UISpec group, so probably not the best place for an unbiased
answer to your question! ;-)

It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to test the
whole application, end-to-end then either will do.

I guess it depends whether you want to use the official Apple
javascript-based solution, or a non-Apple ObjC/UIQuery thing.

Personally, I want to test just the View/ViewController layer and use
OCMock for the rest of my app, so I need something which runs entirely
in the device/emulator - hence my interest in UISpec.

Matthew

[Robert Mathews]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:26 AM, Matthew Flint <m...@tthew.org> wrote:

This is a UISpec group, so probably not the best place for an unbiased
answer to your question! ;-)

It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to test the
whole application, end-to-end then either will do.

No it won't. Apple frankly has its head stuck up its ass with the UIAutomation thing.

Last I checked, UIAutomation was incapable of stopping and starting the simulator - ie, restarting your application across inside a test run. And shades of their unit testing, wasn't clear how to do basic stuff like run the application under the debugger, as UIAutomation was considered to be one of those post-processing tools, like the Profiling tool. Things like hooking into hudson and running from the command line are not design goals for Apple.

In contrast UISpec has that exactly as a goal - using Rails as the test runner. Search this group for notes from Blake Watters posts, or just visit his github: https://github.com/twotoasters/UISpec - he's done a lot of work on that.

Also, lots of people have been getting excited about Frank.

Rob.

I guess it depends whether you want to use the official Apple
javascript-based solution, or a non-Apple ObjC/UIQuery thing.

Personally, I want to test just the View/ViewController layer and use
OCMock for the rest of my app, so I need something which runs entirely
in the device/emulator - hence my interest in UISpec.

Matthew

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[Stewart Gleadow]

I'll second the negative opinion of UIAutomation. UIAutomation seems great - backed by Apple, fairly simple javascript hooks into the app and runs on the device, but it seems to stem from a waterfall approach to development... throw the app over the wall to QAs, who test the app in instruments. Continuous integration and TDD aren't really in the usage plan.

Frank and UISpec combined seem to be solving the problem of automating the running of tests. iCuke is probably worth throwing into the mix as well.

If we could write tests in cucumber, write the steps in javascript and boot the app using the same hooks that Apple uses through Instruments, that would be great, but it doesn't exist yet... iOS 5? Dreaming?

cheers,

Stew

[Rob Mathews]

I like the direction of iCuke, but a recent blog posting told me that it hadn't been updated in a year...which renders it doa if true. 

And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks apple is very  um .. testing-challenged. ;-)

Typos courtesy of my iPhone

[Ben Thomas]

On Mar 30, 10:42 am, Rob Mathews <robertvmath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I like the direction of iCuke, but a recent blog posting told me that it hadn't been updated in a year...which renders it doa if true.
>
> And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks apple is very  um .. testing-challenged. ;-)
>
> Typos courtesy of my iPhone

UI Automation will continue to be updated by Apple, and continue to
work with iOS.

IINM, iCuke already doesn't support > iOS 4.0. Will this happen to
UISpec?

Ben

[Brian Knorr]

UISpec does work with iOS > 4 and will continue to do so :)

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Brian Knorr
Dallas, Texas
http://www.starterstep.com