appium: mobile automation made awesome

The tools and practices refined over the last decade by web developers have not crossed over easily into the mobile community. Mobile devs have been without tools like continuous integration and automated testing, which enable delivery of high-quality apps more rapidly. A key piece of the solution for mobile is Appium, an open-source, cross-platform, language-agnostic mobile automation framework you can use to write automated UI tests for Android and iOS apps (native, hybrid, web), to be run on emulators or devices. In this talk we will explore the philosophy that underlies the work behind Appium, including the open-source nature of Appium’s diverse, active and friendly community. Then, after a brief explanation of the technology that powers Appium, we’ll move into the technical portion of the talk, where attendees will see easy it is to write Appium scripts using the WebDriver protocol in their favorite language, and integrate Appium tests into a CI system using Selenium Grid or Sauce Labs. Finally, we’ll look at some concrete examples of how Appium has been used in a large project with 20 Android Apps at Swiss Post to dramatically improve mobile QA. Ultimately, the talk provides an argument for moving from manual QA to automated testing, an understanding of the mobile automation landscape, and a solid introduction to Appium, which leading projects and companies around the world have chosen as their mobile automation framework of choice.