IPhone Automation - 【StackMirror】|iphone|ios|automation

Are there any libraries/tools to automate iphone interactions. My research has turned up UIAutomation but this seems to be limited to apps in a local testing environment.

I would like to automate interactions on apps that have been published and downloaded to my iphone. I am familiar with automating and testing in the web space but I am new to Iphone development. I would even appreciate strategies without libraries.

2012-04-04 19:32
by Dru

Are you asking to automatically test third-party, no-code apps on your device - Conrad Shultz 2012-04-04 19:41

What exactly do you mean by no-code apps? Does this encompass all apps that I have not developed and do not have the source code for - Dru 2012-04-04 19:55

Yes, that's what I meant - Conrad Shultz 2012-04-04 20:04

Yes, these would be the targets of the script - Dru 2012-04-04 20:17

Nope, can't be done in software (at least with public API). The workaround is to build a robot that automatically taps/swipes the screen. (No joke - this is how device manufacturers do their hardware testing, and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple and Google had their own rigs to do external automation testing. - Conrad Shultz 2012-04-04 20:19

Thanks! I'm already heading in that direction. It may turn out to be less work but it was not the most obvious solution, in my opinion - Dru 2012-04-04 20:27

No, there's no way to automate interactions with other applications. For the most part, iOS apps can't interact with each other at all.

2012-04-04 19:41
by Caleb

Thanks Caleb. Was the second part about apps interacting with each other an afterthought? I am asking because my use case would not require another iphone app, but a local script which interacts with my iphone's view. Although it would be accessing an app that's not mines - Dru 2012-04-04 19:53

Local to what? Do you mean that the script would run on your phone? If so, inside what app? That app would have to interact with whatever other app you'd want to access/automate - Caleb 2012-04-04 20:03

Local to my machine. I do not want to access a specific iphone application but the view of the device itself and programmatically interact with iphone. For example, (from the homescreen of the iphone) click this icon, click this row, assign the contents of this cell to a variable. These are some example functions that a possible solution would have. I think you answered this by saying no but I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I am not trying to build an iphone application to access another iphone application. But an application/script to interact with the phone - Dru 2012-04-04 20:25

Again, no, nothing like that. I think you're looking for something like eggPlant, but there's currently no way to do that for iOS. If you have some time on your hands you could build a robot with a finger covered in capacitive rubber... ;- - Caleb 2012-04-04 20:35

Haha not that kind of robot. I am thinking about an android emulator accessing marketplace then doing GUI automation on the emulator window from my mac - Dru 2012-04-04 20:43