A Hands-on Review of the Testsigma Mobile Recorder

In this post, I’m reviewing the testing tool Testsigma and check how it automates a mobile app.
Testsigma is a test automation platform to simplify the efforts of automation & it is now open source and free!

About Testsigma

Testsigma provides end to end testing support for Web, Mobile apps & Webservices.

With Testsigma, you get a complete test automation ecosystem that works out of the box & offers a wealth of features &

• requires no complex setups
• offers faster test authoring in simple English
• extends the platform effortlessly with add-ons
• lets you integrate tests to your CI/CD pipeline
• supports visual testing & more!

Testsigma’s mobile test recorder

The mobile test recorder of Testsigma is a setup that lets you interact with the application while creating test cases by itself (in plain English!) from your interactions. 

Test cases generated automatically through the mobile recorder

The mobile test recorder helps people who are not yet accustomed to the complexities of writing test cases. For example, clicking on any element in the mobile app creates a step such as Click on an<element> automatically in Testsigma. 

The recorder is an extremely useful way to learn automation concepts side by side while creating test cases without any programming language i.e. in plain English language. For a business, it speeds up the process and time to delivery.

How to test mobile applications using Testsigma mobile recorder

As mentioned in the previous section, using Testsigma’s mobile recorder is the process of interacting with the application and generating the test cases automatically.

For this method, we will go ahead with WordPress’s Android-based mobile application. Since Testsigma provides two methods for automation testing, we will use an iOS application in the next method. However, note that the method steps remain the same regardless of the application’s operating system.

Before starting out the real testing process, make sure you are a member of the Testsigma family (or you can sign up for a free trial here). Then, create a project under which all our test data can be saved.

Now navigate to your project and click on the Record button.

Select the operating system and the device you wish to test on. You can also choose the lab from where the devices will be run for your tests.

Testsigma lab offers a range of real devices for running and testing your mobile application. Real devices give a perfect analysis of your tests on each focus area. Notice that the above-shown panel also gives an option to select the previously used application which in our case is WordPress or you can also upload a new application. 

Click Record to upload the application and start the testing.

After installation of the application, three panes will be visible. The rightmost pane is the mobile recorder through which we can interact directly. The middle pane consists of the recorder controls (or actions). When we click on the element, the details of the element will appear in the centre. The leftmost pane contains all the test case steps in plain English language generated using natural language processing.

Click on the “LOG IN” button and you will notice that the centre pane is filled with relevant information.

It will show three options:

• Tap
• Enter Data
• Clear

Since Log In is a tapping action, we select Tap here.

The appropriate NLP will be generated in the left section:

Once the login screen is up, enter the required data:

You can also clear the data with the “Clear” option after clicking on the element you wish to clear the data for.

The clear action will also be recorded in the Test Steps in the left panel as part of your test.

Click on “Next” and then “Tap” to determine a tap action.

On the next screen, click “Send Link” and then “Tap” to determine a tap action.

Now we need to put an assertion statement to verify our test logic. This is also called a “verify statement” in Testsigma. A verify statement is written in the left pane by clicking on the empty test step at the last. Just type in verify and pick the right template and you are done with testing without writing a single line of code and interacting with the application on the way.

How to test mobile applications using test steps in Testsigma

The other method of testing the mobile applications is using the left-most panel i.e. the test steps recorder directly. This method is different from the mobile recorder one as this time we will not interact with the application for testing purposes.

For this method, we shall be using Twitter’s iOS application for demonstration.

Mobile automation tests can be written by creating a new element or reusing a previous one. A new element is created by adding the element locator and screen on which the element belongs.

Once you have created and saved the element, click on the empty space in the test case recorder.

Enter action with the element. For example, “Tap on <element>”. Here, “Tap on” is an action of tapping. A similar action is entering the data on elements that accepts data such as “email id”.

Which method to choose for recording the test cases is a tester’s choice completely and there is no “better” method amongst the two. Once you have created the test cases, close the recorder.

When you close the recorder, “Run” button will appear on the screen:

We are now ready to run our tests on any device of our choice locally or on the cloud (real device offered by Testsigma).

Choose the device lab, mobile OS, device name and the binary package of the application on the next screen.

Once you have filled in the required information, the “Run Now” button will be enabled. Press the button to run the test steps in the same sequence that you recorded.

You can also view detailed analytic reports in the reports section. 

This is how you can run mobile automation tests in Testsigma without writing a single line of code.

Testsigma is more than mobile testing

While mobile automation testing is one of the strong features of Testsigma, it is definitely not the only one. I personally have seen automation tools with ready-made snippets but have never come across a tool that uses just the English language to create tests. I prefer Testsigma as it does not require additional training and my teammates can start right away. I also prefer Testsigma’s API testing and data-driven testing as they are efficient and provide unparalleled features. 

It has been a strong and friendly relationship with this tool for two years now. I hope Testsigma continues to evolve and innovate in the same direction with new technologies.
With this, I invite you to explore more about Testsigma by referring to Testsigma’s GitHub Repo.

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