Automate Mobile App Testing or Go Insane

http://www.gorillalogic.com/blog/2013/02/automate-mobile-app-testing-or-go-insane

Ten years of going Gorilla!

Today marks the tenth anniversary of Gorilla Logic. It was ten years ago that we embarked on building the world's greatest declarative programming platform.

And failed.

But we didn't call ourselves Gorilla Logic for nothin', and having run smack into a wall, we proceeded to bust right through it.

So as I gaze out the windows of our oh-so-hip offices in downtown Boulder Colorado, and think about the seventy-five gorillas we currently employ, the major customers who trust us to build the software on which they bet their businesses, the open source testing platform we've created that's taking the world by storm, our Development Center in India -- in short -- as I think about all we've achieved in the wake of that earlier train wreck, I can't help but beat my chest, let forth a Tarzanesque scream, and eat a couple of bananas.

The bananas actually help with digestion. After all, I'm ten years older now too. 

And totally psyched.

-Stu

MonkeyTalk Beta 5 Adds Desktop Web and Adobe Flex Scripting!

We just released MonkeyTalk Beta 5, and it's a biggie! With the addition of desktop browser and Adobe Flex scripting, MonkeyTalk is now a single, integrated solution for most major application platforms!

Beta 5 provides comprehensive script recording and playback support for testing any html-based browser application, as well as Adobe Flex apps. Currently, only Firefox browsers are supported (on any OS), but support for all major browsers is coming soon.

Beta 5 also includes:

• A component tree browser that makes it easy to examine the user interface component hierarchy comprising the application under test.
• A screenshot command that lets you record screenshots at any point in a test script.
• Numerous enhancements and bug fixes. See the complete list here

MonkeyTalk Beta 5 is free, open source, and available for immediate download at www.gorillalogic.com/monkeytalk.

Happy Testing!

Gorilla Logic is a "2012 Colorado Company to Watch"

We've been recognized again with another award. It's kinda getting old (not really). This time we're a Colorado Company to Watch. 

I believe we are being watched because we are a dynamic and rapidly growing firm. At least that's what the cops keep telling us.

Gorilla Logic is #16 on Mercury 100 List of Fastest Growing Boulder Companies

The Boulder County Business Report just announced this year's Mercury 100 rankings and we're very excited to have jumped to #16!

MonkeyTalk Beta 4 Adds Mobile WebApp Testing!

The newest version of MonkeyTalk -- Gorilla Logic's free and open source functional testing tool for native and web-based mobile apps -- is available now!

MonkeyTalk Beta 4 adds support for mobile webapp testing via our new "MTBrowser" apps for iOS and Android. MTBrowsers simulate the mobile Safari and Android browsers and let you run MonkeyTalk scripts against mobile web applications.

In addition to mobile web support, Beta 4 also adds the ability to generate screen shots when a test fails, and these screen shots are included in new enhanced html test suite reports.

Beta 4 also includes various bug and stability fixes.

Download MonkeyTalk Beta 4 at http://www.gorillalogic.com/monkeytalk.

Happy testing!

MonkeyTalk Beta 3 Adds Hybrid Native/HTML App Scripting

This morning we pushed out the bits for MonkeyTalk Beta 3, the latest edition of our free and open source functional testing tool for iOS and Android. In addition to the proverbial "numerous bug fixes and stability improvements",  Beta 3 adds playback support for embedded webviews, ie, if you have a "hybrid" application containing native components as well as embedded html browser views, you can now script the interaction with the html seamlessly along with the native portions of the app.

We have mapped html elements to MonkeyTalk logical component types, so there is no need to distinguish within a script between what is native and what is html. For example, the command for tapping on a button looks the same regardless of whether you're scripting native Android, iOS, or html.

Button OK Tap

The above command will work with html buttons created with a button tag, as well as those created with an input tag. Other html elements are similarly mapped. At runtime, MonkeyTalk searches all displayed native and html components until it finds a displayed native or html button labeled OK.

The only big difference at present between native component and html webview handling in MonkeyTalk is that we do not yet support recording html element interactions, so these need to be composed manually without recording. MonkeyTalk of course makes it very easy to whip out a script from scratch, so even without the ability to record, this is a very powerful new feature. All other MonkeyTalk features including parameterization and data-driving are fully supported for html element scripting.

You can download MonkeyTalk Beta 3 from http://www.gorillalogic.com/monkeytalk/download.

Happy testing!

MonkeyTalk Source Code Available Now!

We've finally released the MonkeyTalk source code to our public subversion repo. See http://www.gorillalogic.com/testing-tools/monkeytalk/source-code. for more info. You do need a (completely free) Gorilla Logic id/password to access.

Code contributions are extremely welcome! Anybody interested in helping out with MonkeyTalk engineering should please contact us!

Gorilla Logic named a Top Denver Workplace 2012

Certainly we've always asserted it's the case, but it's nice to have some 3rd-party validation that Gorilla Logic is a f**king great place to work. http://denverpost.topworkplaces.com/company_survey/gorilla-logic-inc_denver/denverpost_12.

New MonkeyTalk Release Now Available for Download!

The newest version of our cross-platform functional testing tool for native Android and iOS apps is here! MonkeyTalk beta2 fixes numerous bug and stability fixes especially around JavaScript generation and execution.

Download it here!

The Value of Continuous QA

Gorilla CTO Ed Schwarz talks about continuous QA in latest issue of Automated Software Testing.

See MonkeyTalk at AnDevCon and save $200!

Gorilla Logic will have a booth at AnDevCon and I'll be presenting a session on MonkeyTalk. Use the discount code STERN and save $200 on your AnDevCon registration!

Hope to see you in San Francisco!

MonkeyTalk is here!

Today we released what is undoubtedly the world's most advanced mobile testing platform. Our latest open source project, MonkeyTalk, combines the power of FoneMonkey for iOS and FoneMonkey for Android into an integrated, cross-platform mobile testing solution. You can record scripts on iOS and play them back on Android, and vice versa.

The MonkeyTalk Platform consists of the following components:

The MonkeyTalk Command Language - A simple, intuitive and easy-to-learn scripting language for specifying platform-independent mobile tests scripts. MonkeyTalk provides comprehensive support for scripting all iOS and Android UI components and multi-touch gestures. MonkeyTalk is simple yet powerful. Even test engineers with little or no programming experience can easily create sophisticated keyword-driven and data-driven test scripts, and can parameterize scripts to create reusable testing components that can be combined to rapidly implement complex testing scenarios. MonkeyTalk scripts can be recorded automatically by the MonkeyTalk IDE, or can be created from scratch using any simple text editor.

The MonkeyTalk IDE - A complete workbench for capturing, editing, replaying, and managing comprehensive mobile test suites. The MonkeyTalk IDE can be run as an Eclipse plugin or as a standalone application on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The MonkeyTalk JavaScript API - The MonkeyTalk IDE can export MonkeyTalk-based scripts to JavaScript, or tests can be written from scratch directly in JavaScript. The MonkeyTalk JavaScript API is clean and natural to use, and the resulting scripts are easy to read and maintain, and like native MonkeyTalk scripts, can be easily reused and data-driven.

MonkeyTalk Agents for iOS and Android - Small, native libraries that can be linked into any Android or iOS application to enable MonkeyTalk recording and playback. No source code changes or jailbreaking required.

Today's release is officially beta, but is quite complete and stable so please give it a spin and let us know what you think. Like all of our tools, MonkeyTalk is completely free and open source!

You can download it here.

Rational Functional Testmonkium

Nice article on IBM developerWorks about using FlexMonkium to add Flex recording/playback to Rational Functional Tester: http://ibm.co/wp65bq.

FoneMonkey for Android Q&A

I'm interviewed about FoneMonkey for Android: http://jaxenter.com/fonemonkey-for-android-q-a-39195.html.

FoneMonkey, Objective-C, and the Dark Arts

Dr. Dobbs just published part 2 of my series on FoneMonkey for iOS. Part 2 gets deep into the very mysterious business of how we record and playback user interactions.

Not only does this article reveal the secrets to extending FoneMonkey, but it also reveals techniques for doing unholy things in Objective-C like replacing method implementations and grafting methods onto objects at runtime.

Java took them away, but Objective-C puts the guns and knives back into programming!

FoneMonkey for Android has Landed!

Just pushed FoneMonkey for Android 0.6 Early Access out the door. You can download it here. We'll be uploading documentation and sample projects over the next few days.

But now...sleep.

Adobe kills Flash

Given that mobile is the future (and the present), this news that Adobe is EOL'ing mobile Flash amounts to a death sentence for desktop Flash as well. It's sad (and perhaps disturbing) that a mature and powerful technology loved by so many was so easily killed off by the neighborhood bully (and everybody just stood by and watched).

Time to learn to love JavaScript.

Dr. Dobbs meets the monkey

I think Dr. Dobb's was the first tech mag I ever read (back in the 80's!). The good doctor just published an article I wrote about FoneMonkey.

We're the "E" in iOS: Open source projects fill Enterprise holes in Xcode

A long, long time ago, just as the internet bubble was really getting going, many pundits were talking about “internet time” to describe the radical time compression brought about by the web. Software release cycles were suddenly occurring over periods of just a few months rather than years, and technology platforms were similarly revving over just a few years whereas previously it had literally taken decades for enterprise IT to make any major changes in how they built software.

If internet time was fast, what are we to make of “mobile time”? The big bang of mobile time, the release of the first iPhone, was just four years ago. Enterprises certainly needed to move quickly to keep up with internet time, but at roughly the same four-year mark, most enterprises were doing little more than creating static websites. There has been no comparable gestation period for mobile development since Apple was nice enough to skip over infancy and adolescence and give birth on day one to fully formed, mature applications employing radically new user interfaces.

While iPhone applications have been pretty “magical” since day one, enterprise-class tool support for iOS app development has been quite a bit slower in coming. It’s hard to find many enterprise developers having anything nice to say about Apple’s Xcode IDE, which is currently the only serious game in town for developing iOS apps. Try the Google search Xcode +”piece of crap” and you’ll be treated to more than 40,000 results. There are of course many similar but more colorful searches you can try.

Back in the days of internet time, Sun created a virtually unusable IDE called Java Workshop. Fortunately for internet time, other companies including IBM, Borland, and Symantec created competing IDE’s and Java development has enjoyed robust tool support ever since. The closed nature of iOS however has understandably dampened the enthusiasm anybody outside of Apple might have for jumping into the nascent iOS development ecosystem. After all, Apple can at any time change the iOS platform in such a way as to make third-party tools incompatible, similar to the way in which iTunes was continually revved to maintain incompatibility with the Palm Pre mobile phone.

So, since the usual commercial suspects have too much business sense to enter into the iOS development ecosystem, it’s left up to those of us with little or no business sense – I am of course referring to open source software developers – to fill the gap!