Automated GUI Testing .NET CF (Windows Mobile 5)

Question

My company is looking into using automated GUI testing for our current app before proceeding to alpha. Our current main focus is robustness testing, one way we want to achieve this is automated UI testing that can be repeated over several hours/days.

For our desktop version we've decided on AutomationElement, and I've seen several free open source frameworks. For .NET CF the options seem more limited. I found M-eux Test, but the license fee is a little bit steep. I also found Test Complete 7, which I am planning on looking into.

The tests will be written by programmers. Support for being able to affect specific UI elements would be nice, although a simple record/playback may be satisfactory for our current needs.

Developing for Windows Mobile 5.0. Support for Windows CE would be nice, but not required.

Has anyone been in this situation before? Any tools that you recommend? Any best practices I should be aware about?

Answer 1

Not done any WM GUI testing before but recommend HoppeR be part of your testing also.

Answer 2

I have done simple GUI testing with AutoHotKey http://www.autohotkey.com/. This would of course only work while running your mobile application in a VM, but would be good for regression testing. As a developer, I have tried other testing platforms but they have always seemed to have major short comings, be overpriced and under utilized. The main reason for this can be the lack of a dedicated testing department. If you are not doing test driven development start there, then progress to something [relatively] simple and free like AutoHotKey. If you find that AutoHotKey is being utilized and finding or helping to prevent problems then investigate moving up to more powerful tools as needed.

Answer 3

AutoHotKey is available for the windows ce / mobile please look at http://www.autohotkey.net/~Micha/AutohotkeyCE/html/index.htm. I use this along with a script to perform an automated test. The application under test produces logging information that I assert things to prove the test is working.

Before this I used the ActiveSyncRemoteDisplay tool with the windows mobile power toys and autohotkey on the desktop. I still use this combination (along with the windows spy) to note the xy co-ordinates of certain screen spots.

Answer 4

We build websites at work and we use sikuli http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/sikuli/ to do simple gui testing also unit testing. We leverage the graphical programming aspect of sikuli to do certain gui operations on a certain widget.

The macro recording of autohotkey and the graphical programming style of sikuli complement each other purrrfectly. Personally I prefer sikuli because it supports the syntax of python, the coding style is more structured and consistent than the ahk language.