UI Testing with the UIAutomation Framework by Dan Pilone and Courtney Nash

Summary: Good introduction to Instruments

So, you have already incorporated Unit Testing into your application. Now, it’s time to test the UI. Manual testing doesn’t scale here. If you have came up with complex application, you can find yourself in a position where testing most of the functionality and their variations is simply impossible. Another drawback is that you have to do it again and again. Unit Testing doesn’t provide a solution here. It places you on the wrong side of the screen. You actually deal with the code, not the application itself. You don’t have user’s perspective. This, however, can be solved if you start with User Interface testing instead. It puts the test process in the position of the user. What is the one of the biggest benefits here? You don’t have to test your application by yourself (manually), while at the same time, you have your application tested as if somebody used it. User interface testing can be done via, so called, UI Automation Framework. This is a tool you can find bundled with XCode. It allows you to automate the User Interface testing process. It has great feature that helps you to automate the process even more – it uses Java Script as a scripting language, and provides you with ability to “write” the test instead of recording it. Dan and Courtney try to provide viewers with most basic usage scenarios and give you a real introduction to UI testing. This way, you can get the basics of the process. You will, probably, look for another sources as well, but still, this is a good place to start. As Dan mentions, dozen of iPhone developers have never ever seen the Instruments in their lives. This is really an issue. There are so many profiling tools out there and still so few people use the in order to analyze their applications. What is nice about this video is that it gives you the taste of what you can achieve with User Automation Framework, on the other hand it’s a pity that you can’t download the tutorial and go with the steps Dan does. This is really a drawback of the series. You can watch, but you can’t touch. Of course, you can create your own project and start experimenting, but I am pretty sure that providing viewers with simple application for download and providing them with ability to proceed with all the steps would be a huge improvement here. On the other hand, what I like most about the series is that Courtney and Dan prepare it a really good way. It is simply an entertainment to watch episodes one after another.

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