Frank(enstein), Victor, Shelley, and Igor: Tools for Testing iOS Applications

A client wants to write automated tests for their iOS app. I did a little research to find existing tools, and decided that I liked Frank. Frank embeds a small HTTP server (the Frank server) into an iOS application that runs in a simulator. You can write tests that interact with views in an app by sending commands to the Frank server.

Another element of Frank is an API for writing tests using Cucumber, a simple, popular Ruby-based testing framework.

One thing didn’t fit: My client’s test automators know Java, but they don’t know Ruby or Cucumber. So I wrote a Java driver (front end) for Frank, which I called Victor. The Victor API is a DSL similar to ones I’ve created in other situations, such as when I wrote a Selenium-based driver for testing Web applications.

I soon discovered that Frank development was at a point of transition. The existing Frank server relied on a third-party library called UIQuery to identify the views to interact with. But UIQuery development had gone stale, so Pete Hodgson (the awesome developer behind Frank) was in the process of writing a new query engine called Shelley to replace UIQuery.

I was a little nervous about inviting my clients to begin using a tool that was in the midst of such a transition. So I started writing a query engine of my own, called Igor. Now, my own query engine would be in transition, too, but at least my clients and I would be in control of it.

As I chatted about Igor on the Frank mailing list, Pete nudged invited me to consider creating a query syntax that looked something like CSS selectors, to allow people to apply their existing CSS knowledge.

I’ve spent much of the last few days designing the Igor syntax. I also implemented a few basic view selectors. Finally, I figured out how to convince Frank to delegate its queries to Igor, a process that is becoming easier as Pete adjusts Frank to allow a variety of query engines.

I’m hoping to have a few more of the most useful selectors implemented before I return to my client next Monday. If you want to take a peek, or follow along, or give feedback, here are links to the various technologies: