Appium
Appium is an open-source, cross-platform test automation tool for native, hybrid, mobile web and desktop apps. Initially created to automate iOS and Android mobile applications Appium has grown to a full-featured platform that provides WebDriver-based automation possibilities for the whole set of different mobile and desktop platforms. See the full list of officially-supported and third-party drivers for more details.
Appium is in the final stages of a major revision (to version 2.0). As such, the documentation found around the web may not be correct. The current Appium 2.0 documentation is very much in progress. Currently, it can be found here.
Requirements
- macOS, Linux or Windows operating system
- Node.js 14+
- NPM (Node Package Manager) 8+
These are only server requirements. Each driver might have its own requirements. Consider checking the corresponding driver tutorial for more details.
Server
To install Appium 2 server using Node Package Manager (npm) run the following command:
npm install -g appium@nextnpm install -g appium would still install Appium 1 because version 2 is in its late beta stage.
Drivers
Appium supports app automation across a variety of platforms, like iOS, Android, and Windows. Each platform is supported by one or more "drivers", which know how to automate that particular platform. Since version 2.0 all drivers have been isolated from the Appium server app and can be managed independently using the appium driver command line interface.
In general, the drivers management in Appium 2 is as simple as:
# To install a new driver from npm
appium driver install --source=npm appium-xcuitest-driver[@<version>]
# To install a driver from a local folder (useful for developers)
appium driver install --source=local /Users/me/sources/appium-xcuitest-driver
# To install a new driver from github (hm, maybe it's time to publish it to NPM?)
appium driver install --source=github --package=appium-xcuitest-driver appium/appium-xcuitest-driver
# To list already installed drivers
appium driver list --installed
# To update a driver (it must be already installed)
appium driver update xcuitest
# To uninstall a driver (it won't last forever, wouldn't it?)
appium driver uninstall xcuitestYou can find a full list of officially-supported and third-party drivers at the current Appium 2.0 documentation.
Plugins
The concept of plugins is something new that has been added exclusively to Appium2. Plugins allow you to extend server functionality without changing the server code. Plugins could be managed similarly to drivers:
# To install an officially supported plugin
appium plugin install images
# To install a plugin from a local folder (useful for developers)
appium plugin install --source=local /Users/me/sources/images
# To install a new plugin from npm
appium plugin install --source=npm appium-device-farm
# To list already installed plugins
appium plugin list --installed
# To update a plugins (it must be already installed)
appium plugin update appium-device-farm
# To uninstall a plugin
appium plugin uninstall appium-device-farmThe main difference between drivers and plugins is that the latter must be explicitly enabled on server startup after it was installed (drivers are enabled by default after installation):
appium server --use-plugins=device-farm,imagesYou can find a full list of officially-supported and third-party plugins at the current Appium 2.0 documentation.
Server Command Line Interface
In order to start sending commands to Appium over the wire it must be listening on the URL where your client library expects it to listen. Use the following commands to run and configure Appium server:
# Start the server on the default port and host (e.g. http://0.0.0.0:4723/)
appium server
# Start the server on the given port, host and use the base path prefix (the default prefix is /)
appium server -p 9000 -a 127.0.0.1 -pa /wd/hub
# Get the list of all supported command line parameters.
# This list would also include descriptions of driver-specific
# command line arguments for all installed drivers.
# Each driver and plugin must have their command line arguments
# exposed in a special JSON schema declared as a part of the corresponding
# package.json file.
appium server --helpAppium supports execution of parallel server processes as well as parallel driver sessions within single server process. Refer the corresponding driver documentations regarding which mode is optimal for the particular driver or whether it supports parallel sessions.
Why Appium?
- You usually don't have to recompile your app or modify it in any way, due to the use of standard automation APIs on all platforms.
- You can write tests with your favorite dev tools using any WebDriver-compatible language such as Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, C# with the Selenium WebDriver API. There are also various third party client implementations for other languages.
- You can use any testing framework.
- Some drivers, like xcuitest and uiautomator2 ones have built-in mobile web and hybrid app support. Within the same script, you can switch seamlessly between native app automation and webview automation, all using the WebDriver model that's already the standard for web automation.
- You can run your automated tests locally and in a cloud. There are multiple cloud providers that support various Appium drivers (mostly targeting iOS and Android mobile automation).
- Appium Inspector allows visual debugging of automated tests and could be extremely useful for beginners.
Investing in the WebDriver protocol means you are betting on a single, free, and open protocol for testing that has become a web standard. Don't lock yourself into a proprietary stack.
For example, if you use Apple's XCUITest library without Appium you can only write tests using Obj-C/Swift, and you can only run tests through Xcode. Similarly, with Google's UiAutomator or Espresso, you can only write tests in Java/Kotlin. Appium opens up the possibility of true cross-platform native app automation, for mobile and beyond. Finally!
If you're new to Appium or want a more comprehensive description of what this is all about, please read our Intro to Appium.
Quickstart
Check out our Quickstart guide to get going with Appium.
There is also a sample code that contains many examples of tests in a variety of different languages!
Documentation
For prettily-rendered docs, please visit Appium Documentation. You can always find the full list of Appium doc pages at Appium's GitHub Repo as well.
Contributing
Please take a look at our contribution documentation for instructions on how to build, test, and run Appium from the source.
Roadmap
Interested in where Appium is heading in the future? Check out the Roadmap
Project History, Credits & Inspiration
User Forums
Announcements and debates often take place on the Discussion Group, be sure to sign up!
Troubleshooting
Please find the troubleshooting guide at the corresponding driver repository/documentation.
