I feel a bit awkward about answering my own bounty question, but here it is...
I've searched high and low on this and can't believe there is no answer published anywhere. I have come very close. I can definitely run tests that span activities now, but my implementation seems to have some timing issues where the tests don't always pass reliably. This is the only example that I know of that tests across multiple activities successfully. Hopefully my extraction and anonymizing of it did not introduce errors. This is a simplistic test where I type a username and password into a login activity, and then observe a proper welcome message is shown on a different "welcome" activity:
package com.mycompany;
import android.app.*;
import android.content.*;
import android.test.*;
import android.test.suitebuilder.annotation.*;
import android.util.*;
import android.view.*;
import android.widget.*;
import static org.hamcrest.core.Is.*;
import static org.hamcrest.core.IsNull.*;
import static org.hamcrest.core.IsInstanceOf.instanceOf;
import static org.junit.Assert.*;
import static com.mycompany.R.id.*;
public class LoginTests extends InstrumentationTestCase {
@MediumTest
public void testAValidUserCanLogIn() {
Instrumentation instrumentation = getInstrumentation();
// Register we are interested in the authentication activiry...
Instrumentation.ActivityMonitor monitor = instrumentation.addMonitor(AuthenticateActivity.class.getName(), null, false);
// Start the authentication activity as the first activity...
Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MAIN);
intent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
intent.setClassName(instrumentation.getTargetContext(), AuthenticateActivity.class.getName());
instrumentation.startActivitySync(intent);
// Wait for it to start...
Activity currentActivity = getInstrumentation().waitForMonitorWithTimeout(monitor, 5);
assertThat(currentActivity, is(notNullValue()));
// Type into the username field...
View currentView = currentActivity.findViewById(username_field);
assertThat(currentView, is(notNullValue()));
assertThat(currentView, instanceOf(EditText.class));
TouchUtils.clickView(this, currentView);
instrumentation.sendStringSync("MyUsername");
// Type into the password field...
currentView = currentActivity.findViewById(password_field);
assertThat(currentView, is(notNullValue()));
assertThat(currentView, instanceOf(EditText.class));
TouchUtils.clickView(this, currentView);
instrumentation.sendStringSync("MyPassword");
// Register we are interested in the welcome activity...
// this has to be done before we do something that will send us to that
// activity...
instrumentation.removeMonitor(monitor);
monitor = instrumentation.addMonitor(WelcomeActivity.class.getName(), null, false);
// Click the login button...
currentView = currentActivity.findViewById(login_button;
assertThat(currentView, is(notNullValue()));
assertThat(currentView, instanceOf(Button.class));
TouchUtils.clickView(this, currentView);
// Wait for the welcome page to start...
currentActivity = getInstrumentation().waitForMonitorWithTimeout(monitor, 5);
assertThat(currentActivity, is(notNullValue()));
// Make sure we are logged in...
currentView = currentActivity.findViewById(welcome_message);
assertThat(currentView, is(notNullValue()));
assertThat(currentView, instanceOf(TextView.class));
assertThat(((TextView)currentView).getText().toString(), is("Welcome, MyUsername!"));
}
}
This code is obviously not very readable. I have actually extracted it into a simple library with an English-like API so I can just say things like this:
type("myUsername").intoThe(username_field);
click(login_button);
I've tested to a depth of about 4 activities and am satisfied that the approach works though as I said, there appears to be an occasional timing issue I have not completely figured out. I am still interested in hearing of any other ways of testing across activities.