Presentation: Tweet"Calabash, an open-source automated testing technology for native mobile"

Mobile developers are now facing the problems that have been facing web developers for many years: platform fragmentation. In mobile, it consists supporting the many phone and tablet models, combined with operating systems, versions and even languages. The road to higher quality is good test coverage, which is repetitive and takes up many resources.

Calabash is an open source technology for automated functional (or "GUI") testing of Android and iOS apps. Calabash combines advanced automation technology for Android and iOS with the Cucumber tool. Developers or QA staff can write executable tests that closely match the use cases for the app. Tests are written in a natural language close to the application business domain, and the cucumber tool can execute those tests on Android or iOS devices or simulators. Tests consist of three types of steps: actions (touching, swiping, entering text etc), assertions (e.g., I should see a "Login" button) and screenshots (which take screenshots of the application at that point).

This talk will introduce Calabash and LessPainful, which provides test execution as a service. LessPainful provides hosted, cloud-based execution of Calabash tests that run concurrently on many physical, non-jailbroken devices running various languages and operating system versions. The talk will focus on iOS, and compare the architecture of Calabash with other test automation options like UIAutomation, Frank and Zucchini.