I am new to Android test frameworks ,Would like to know the differences between existing test frameworks : Monkey , CTS ,Instrumentation Framework & Robotium ?
+2
A:
Instrumentation is a category of testing, opposite to Unit-testing.
The framework provides hooks for instrumentation testing, but you are going to need an additional third-party framework to really get going.
Robotium is such a framework. It allows you to write "scripts" that run through the user interface, saying "click this", "type that", etc. Well-written it can take you through your usecases and thus provide a good feeling that your app isn't broken. It also allows you to test multiple activities and activities interacting.
Unit-testing in my experience is very hard for Android, especially for the "regular" code dealing with UI, databases, activity state, etc., unless you write your code for testability.
The Android Monkey also uses instrumentation to run through your user interface but it does not follow a script. It does this randomly, with the idea that whatever it does it should not crash your app. By generating 100000's of events it tries to get coverage as high as possible, based on statistics. Other than Robotium, the monkey never leaves your app (that would be dangerous). It's a perfect complement though and it comes nearly for free (the setup is really cheap and there is no maintenance).
What is CTS?
You'll probably also want to know about mocks?
pjv
2010-09-26 20:55:52