Firebase Test Lab — Knowledge Boost For Android App Testing

Not everyone always has easy access to multiple testing devices. As a solution to limited real-time testing capabilities, Google introduced Firebase Test Lab, a collection of testing tools that allows you to test apps on devices hosted in a Google data center.

What can Firebase Test Lab do:

1- Run Robo Test: Robo Test analyzes the structure of your app’s UI.  It explores the app methodically, crawling automatically into the app, simulating user activities.

2 –Instrumentation Test: Test Lab lets you run Espresso and UI Automator 2.0 instrumentation tests written to exercise your app from the Firebase console, Android Studio, or the g-cloud command line interface.

3- Game Loop Test: Testing games has presented a host of challenges for testers. Test lab provides a solution to many of these challenges with game loop test.

(Note: We’re going to focus primarily on Robo Test, which requires zero coding.)

Getting Started

• Set up an account in firebase.
• Create a new Project (e.g. CloudTest).

Firebase test lab landing page

Create a new Firebase Project

• Under menu section select “Test Lab”.
• Now drop or upload your APK file.
• Select “Robo Test”, and click continue.

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Creation of a project

Select Test type (For beginners, start with Robo Test)

• Upload your test APK file or script, in case you want to customize your test flow.

Choosing the type of test

Upload your test APK ( try apkpure.com )

• Select the devices and API levels appropriate for app testing.

***Please note there is a quota on device usage as per plan- Free plan provides a daily quota of 5 physical and 10 virtual device test executions that is refreshed at (12AM PST)***

• Select targeted orientation and locale.

Uploading your test files

Adjust Settings

• Switch to Advance option > Set test timeout execution> Set Test depth coverage

Adjust settings accordingly

Advanced Options

Please note: if your app has a login page, test crawler will not be able to crawl inside the app until login credential is not pre-set.

Set Test credentials as follows:

• Enter Username Resource = edit_login_email , Enter username- rtiwari
• Enter Password Resource = edit_login_password, Enter password- qwerty123
• Note: Use UiAutomatorViewer to get resource id or bug your developer to get the R.id 🙂

Additional Advanced Settings

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Start the test!**

Begin the testing

Run the Test

• Now you can sit back while Firebase tests your app.
• The test matrix results contain Logs, Activity maps , Screenshots ,Videos and Performance matrices.
• Also, we can run Firebase Test Lab from Firebase Console, G Cloud CLI, and with CI system.
• You will be notified when your test is complete!

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