Parallel Testing With Appium On Cloud Platforms

By Albert - On Oct 20, 2023

The growing number of mobile applications has increased the pressure on organizations to provide seamless user experiences in today’s fast-paced technological environments. The diversity of mobile devices, intense competition, and evolving user expectations make it challenging to test mobile apps regularly.

Without the aid of efficient test automation tools such as Playwright, Jest, Selenium, test automation cannot be successful. Automation tools run test cases and produce test results without human intervention. To meet the expanding testing needs and demands, a wide range of well-liked automation testing tools are already accessible.

Consequently, effective mobile app testing procedures are more essential than ever to guarantee excellent performance. Hence the use of a cutting-edge testing strategy called parallel testing allows for thorough test coverage in the quickest execution time while maintaining both quality and performance.

When it comes to mobile automation, Appium is a useful solution that enables organizations to automate their testing efforts and get better results faster. Appium is an open-source mobile automation testing solution that can run tests simultaneously on Apple iOS, Android, and Windows desktops.

In this article, we will talk about parallel Appium testing on cloud platforms. We will first talk about what Appium is before moving on to that. Additionally, we’ll briefly go over what parallel testing is, why it’s crucial, and the benefits of utilizing Appium to execute it.

What is Appium?

Appium is one of the most extensively used and most well-known open-source cross-platform automation tools. It offers a variety of options for executing scripts and carrying out tests on a variety of mobile applications, including native, hybrid, and mobile web apps, on platforms like Android and iOS.

Appium is a platform that uses Node.js for its server, which makes it reliable and effective. It offers compatibility with a wide range of programming languages, including Java, Ruby, C#, Python, JavaScript, and more. This enables users to work with the programming languages of their choice. Because of its adaptability, Appium can be easily incorporated into developers’ and testers’ existing processes, allowing them to continue using their favorite tools and frameworks.

A wide variety of testing techniques, tools, and frameworks are also supported by Appium. Users can take advantage of this to use the tools and frameworks that best suit their requirements and preferred testing practices.

Overview of Parallel testing

Efficiency in testing practices has become more important than ever to compete in the market today, especially in the fast-paced software development environment where a speedier time to market is of the utmost importance. Traditional sequential testing involves running tests one after another; this can take a long time, especially for big test suites, and cause delays in the delivery of applications. The obvious alternative here is to adopt a testing strategy that will enable speed-up automation execution.

One such effective strategy for streamlining testing efforts is parallel testing. Executing tests in parallel is extremely beneficial for mobile applications, particularly for cross-browser and cross-device testing. Application testers can significantly minimize test execution time while keeping the same amount of test coverage by utilizing the potential of parallel test execution with Appium.

Parallel testing, as the name implies, is the technique of executing several automation test scripts simultaneously in various contexts, devices, and browser configurations. Its main goal is to conserve resources and time.

Importance of Parallel Testing with Appium

By taking advantage of Appium’s Parallel Testing independent tests can be run simultaneously to speed up execution times. It enables test execution, data collection, and quick app fixing of issues. Running a test script on as many devices as possible is the basic objective of parallelization. Below are some of the reasons why parallel testing is crucial.

When an application receives an update that is comparable to an earlier version, executing tests parallelly can help validate the various updates. Additionally, this guarantees that the new update operates correctly and maintains consistency with the previous version.
Parallel testing can be quite helpful in evaluating the seamless transfer of data when transferring legacy data from an old system to a new one. It is possible to identify any problems or disparities more quickly by incorporating parallel testing.
When testing an application across different devices, and browser configurations, Appium parallel execution is helpful. Parallel testing on multiple platforms guarantees that the application works seamlessly in a variety of configurations.
It helps to remove the bottleneck, which speeds up testing and reduces the chance of continuous quality visibility.
Appium’s parallel test execution enables automated testing of native, hybrid, and mobile web applications and offers support for a variety of programming languages. It allows QA teams to test across a wide range of browsers, devices, and OS combinations without having to worry about build times.

Advantages of parallel testing

There are several advantages to parallel testing that can significantly enhance the process of testing and improve the quality of applications. Time-saving is the main reason for parallel testing. In addition to this, there are further major advantages which are discussed below.

It can take a lot of time to perform sequential testing. In contrast, parallel testing accelerates the testing process by performing several tests simultaneously while dividing them among parallel threads or machines. The time-to-market for the application is shortened as a result of this time-saving feature, which enables quicker feedback loops and bug fixes.
In addition to saving time testing an application parallelly on various browser and device combinations, saves a lot of resources. Additionally, testers have the option to employ cloud-based resources rather than building their infrastructure, which can be expensive and time-consuming.
By running several tests concurrently across various environments, parallel testing enables better test coverage in less time. This approach leads to more thorough test coverage by assisting in the identification of defects and possible issues in various contexts.
By detecting concurrency faults, and other problems that can go undetected during sequential testing, parallel testing increases test reliability. Simultaneous test execution makes it simpler to spot and reproduce such issues, enabling earlier identification, quick reporting, and immediate feedback.

Parallel testing with Appium on cloud platforms

For web applications and sites to work correctly across all browsers, developers must make sure that they are compatible with different browsers and versions. Parallel testing is a technique for maximizing automation testing capabilities by enabling the same tests to be performed concurrently in various contexts, real device combinations, and browser setups. Reducing time and budget restrictions is the primary objective of parallel testing.

It is highly advised for teams moving towards automating parallel testing using Appium to choose cloud platforms with built-in Appium support. By executing scripts on many configurations simultaneously, parallel testing over the cloud enables QA to free themselves from the hassle of managing and sharing devices and dramatically reduce infrastructure expenses.

A cloud platform streamlines the entire automated testing and continuous delivery workflow in addition to facilitating device management and sharing. Exploring a mobile device testing lab with integrated Appium makes the automation process simpler and enables teams to easily start small and scale up. Additionally, it offers an extra layer of assistance to get through any difficulties that can occur while using an open-source platform for testing.

The popular cloud platforms that offer parallel testing are listed below.

LambdaTest

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that offers a variety of testing options including testing using the popular automation tools like Appium. With built-in Appium support, LambdaTest enables the parallel execution of several automated tests across a variety of platforms and browsers. Support for Appium parallelization enables organizations to accelerate release cycles, streamline testing procedures, and provide their users with high-quality digital experiences.

Users can execute their automated test scripts on a cloud of more than 3000 real devices, browsers, and operating system combinations online by utilizing LambdaTest. This implies that rather than being constrained to a single device, testers can distribute their Appium tests across a variety of devices and browsers available in the cloud-based infrastructure.

By running their Appium tests simultaneously on several devices and browsers, all within the LambdaTest environment, testers can obtain thorough test coverage. With the help of this parallel execution capability, they easily identify potential issues and guarantee that their applications run smoothly across several platforms. This significantly boosts effectiveness and cuts down on testing time.

Users of LambdaTest also receive a thorough report for Appium mobile test automation including images, logs, and videos. Additionally, they receive performance metrics for Appium tests, which are often very difficult to obtain via Appium, such as CPU, battery, and memory consumption data. In short, the LambdaTest platform’s parallel execution makes the entire testing process faster and more effective.

Ranorex Studio

A Windows GUI test automation tool called Ranorex Studio supports end-to-end testing for desktop, online, mobile, and API applications and supports cross-platform testing. Additionally, this tool has a record and replay function that enables automated UI testing by recording UI activities.

DeviceAnywhere

DeviceAnywhere is a cloud-based mobile testing platform that provides access to a wide range of real iOS and Android devices. It also offers a variety of features to support Appium testing, including:

Parallel testing: DeviceAnywhere allows you to run multiple tests in parallel on different devices, which can significantly speed up your testing process.
Secure testing environments: DeviceAnywhere provides secure and encrypted testing environments to protect your data.
Detailed test reports and analytics: DeviceAnywhere provides detailed test reports and analytics that can help you to identify and diagnose bugs.
Integration with popular testing tools and frameworks: DeviceAnywhere integrates with popular testing tools and frameworks, such as Appium, Selenium, and TestNG, making it easy to integrate into your existing testing workflow.

Katalon Studio

Appium and Selenium serve as the foundation for the Katalon Platform. It is an all-encompassing automated testing solution for Windows desktop, mobile, online, and API. Through the use of Katalon’s parallel execution functionality, numerous test suites may be performed concurrently across various test environments, thus reducing execution time and enabling the quick and accurate delivery of results.

With low-code techniques, it provides users of all scales and levels of competence with a codeless testing experience, eliminating the trouble of creating a test automation framework from scratch and the requirements of programming.

It also offers detailed test reports of every testing stage for better monitoring and team collaboration. Among its other features are record-and-replay, cross-browser compatibility, no-code automation, and real device testing.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that application testing is crucial and challenging for the creation of mobile apps, especially with the wide range of mobile device options available today. Covering every possible combination, in different operating system versions and devices makes it very time-consuming and difficult. For this reason, it is advised to automate testing utilizing a parallel perspective on cloud platforms using technologies like Appium.

Appium has a wide range of advantages for mobile automation. It streamlines the test creation process, making it simple to use and open to even people who have little prior automation experience. Alternatively, cloud solutions enable testers to select a farm of devices and run any number of tests against them.