This project is no longer maintained.

Please refer to https://github.com/appium-userland/appium-flutter-driver.

proto_flutter_driver_server

features

• $ flutter driver --target=test_driver/app.dart
• Access to:
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/element: find an element by text You have pushed the button this many times:
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/element/button: find a button named add the number
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/element/text: Get the element text
    • After localhost:8080/hub/wd/element, it returns text You have pushed the button this many times:
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/element/semanticId: Get the semantics node id for the object returned by finder, or the nearest ancestor with a semantics node
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/element/click: find a button named add the number
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/source: Show the result of render tree
  • localhost:8080/hub/wd/screenshot: Take a screenshot on the screen. It is saved on the root directory of this project. The screenshot is dart VM view.
  

This method can work for real devices, iOS and Android, if they were connected to the host machine. e.g. iOS case

Why

This repository aimed to PoC for extending current Appium UIA2 driver to flutter one. Appium can handle flutter elements via flutter_driver in addition to normal UIA2/Espresso or XCUITest driver via your favorite programming language if this works.

To make functional tests stable, using vanilla Espresso/XCUITest/flutter_driver is better handling their test target's internal state. It is kindly grey-box style, but they should specialise their platform.

We should change programming languages to implement test scenarios for them. I would like to make less change in this kind of scenario layer, ideally. So, I believe it is great if we have a layer to adapt for test scenarios and for each platform layer.

Structure

• https://github.com/KazuCocoa/proto-flutter-driver-server/blob/master/test_driver/app.dart
  • Calls main in Flutter
• https://github.com/KazuCocoa/proto-flutter-driver-server/blob/master/test_driver/app_test.dart
  • Pass dart driver to Appium Driver server
• https://github.com/KazuCocoa/proto-flutter-driver-server/blob/master/test_driver/appium_driver.dart
  • HttpServer to handle http request and handle Flutter stuff via flutter_driver

Semantics

Flutter provides Semantics class. We can set it like below. Then, we can find the element via driver.bySemanticsLabel('label'). It is not accessibility identifier, but the feature is for accessibility tool. So, like a content-description or accessibility label.

  floatingActionButton: FloatingActionButton(
    onPressed: _incrementCounter,
    tooltip: 'Increment',
    // semanticLabel is used by accessibility model
    child: Icon(Icons.add, semanticLabel: 'add the number'),
  )

Note

A prototype to write a test package which can communicate with flutter-driver via HTTP request

Calling app.main(); to show Flutter UIs is necessary. We could not connect to the VM without test_driver/app.dart. Maybe, we should build a library to call it in app_test.dart as a appium-driver server which will be a bridge between Appium and Flutter driver.

https://kazucocoa.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/appiumfluttercalls-flutter-driver-via-httprequests/

gif

notes

• Flutter driver communicates with DartVM via VMServiceClient which is implemented by https://github.com/dart-lang/vm_service_client
  • protocol: https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/blob/master/runtime/vm/service/service.md
• The communication protocol between Dart VM and Flutter is https://github.com/dart-lang/json_rpc_2, https://github.com/dart-lang/json_rpc_2/blob/6c1aa294ae082343a6bcdae5778ce04e1f4c1e3a/lib/src/peer.dart#L20

I wondered which was better to handle elements via flutter_driver or via direct communication with DartVM with web-socket. flutter_driver has knowledge about Flutter, so we can rely on the driver about Flutter stuff while it increase communication flow though.

---

interesting issues

Flutter team is working to make Espresso/EarlGrey accessible to Flutter semantics. If their works well, maybe Appium also can work perfectly without Flutter Driver <=> Appium.

• Support espresso/EarlGrey integration tests on engine PRs
  • flutter/flutter#32987
• google/EarlGrey#778 (comment)
• flutter/flutter#32062