Gorilla Logic Enhances Its Open Source Mobile App Testing Tools
by Bill Ives
Application testing is a critical component of development and its importance and impact is often over looked. With the dramatic increase in mobile apps on a variety of platforms, testing could be the “gotcha” for many developers. Gorilla Logic has recognized this need and offers a suite of automated testing tools to ease the pain. I have covered them before on this blog (see The Rise in Mobile Apps Puts New Demands on Developers). I recently spoke with their CEO, Stu Stern and Ed Schwartz, VP of Engineering, on Gorilla Logic’s latest moves.
Gorilla Logic is a provider of enterprise application development services. They have also created open source testing tools for mobile and rich Internet applications. The tools are provided for free and they offer set up and support services. All of the functional is contained within the free version, as there is no premium commercial upgrade.
Monkey Talk is test tool for Apple’s iOS that records actions with the iPhone or iPad while in use and plays them back as a test script at any time. It enables the interactive creation, editing, and playback of automation scripts that exercise an application’s user interface. Monkey Talk provides similar capabilities in the for Adobe Flex environment. These tools can run tests in an automated, CI testing environment, that is especially suitable for Agile processes and generate native code for complete test customization and extensibility.
They are now offering similar capabilities for the Android environment. Monkey Talk for Android allows testers without in-depth Android Software Developer Kit (SDK) knowledge to quickly create testing scripts. An Eclipse-based control console provides easy creation and editing of automation scripts. Scripts can be created and run on an emulator or actual device and it supports virtually all Android SDK UI components and gestures. There is automatic generation of extensible test scripts in either Java or JavaScript and you can run tests in continuous integration environments. Here is an example of how the record, playback and code generation features interact.
Stu pointed out the Monkey Talk allows for high level recording of gestures, such as swipe, rather than low-level touch events, so that recorded scripts are readable and editable, and can even be created from scratch without recording.
Monkey Talk can help integrate the efforts of Agile team members. Testers can use the interactive console without any programming requirements. Developers can stay within native code and test engineers can operate in the easier to use Javascript. Here is an example of how Monkey Talk works with Apple iOS in both its native Objective-C and Javascript.
Their next move is to combine the capabilities to handle the testing of both Apple iOS and Android apps in the same tool. This makes sense as developers often create apps to play in both of these environments and now they will have one tool to handle both. Gorilla Logic’s support services include startups, annual supports, and incident support. They will soon offer a complete outsourcing of your app testing.
Testing is a critical component of application success. In some ways it has become even more important in the self-service transparent world we now live in. As Stu mentioned, in the past if an app did not work, a user might complain to their IT shop. Now they go to a review Web site and tell the world.
