Testing tools for Android context-aware applications: a systematic mapping

Abstract

Context: Mobile devices, such as smartphones, have increased their capacity of information processing and sensors have been aggregated to their hardware. Such sensors allow capturing information from the environment in which they are introduced. As a result, mobile applications that use the environment and user information to provide services or perform context-based actions are increasingly common. This type of application is known as context-aware application. While software testing is an expensive activity in general, testing context-aware applications is an even more expensive and challenging activity. Thus, efforts are needed to automate testing for context-aware applications, particularly in the scope of Android, which is currently the most used operating system by smartphones. Objective: This paper aims to identify and discuss the state-of-the-art tools that allow the automation of testing Android context-aware applications. Method: In order to do so, we carried out a systematic mapping study (SMS) to find out the studies in the existing literature that describe or present Android testing tools. The discovered tools were then analyzed to identify their potential in testing Android context-aware applications. Result: A total of 68 works and 80 tools were obtained as a result of the SMS. From the identified tools, five are context-aware Android application testing tools, and five are general Android application testing tools, but support the test of the context-aware feature. Conclusion: Although context-aware application testing tools do exist, they do not support automatic generation or execution of test cases focusing on high-level contexts. Moreover, they do not support asynchronous context variations.

Implementasi Topik Pembelajaran Basic Data Storage pada Android Programming Learning Assistance System

“…Untuk memvalidasi secara otomatis jawaban mahasiswa, APLAS menggunakan dua alat pengujian, JUnit (Jain & Gopalani, 2017) H a l a m a n | 123 aplikasi Android, seperti tata letak UI, activity, event listener, dan resource (Almeida et al, 2019).…”

An Implementation of Solution Progress Monitoring Function in Android Programming Learning Assistance System

“…An automatic testing tool is essential to implement the automated assessment or validation of source codes. Almedia et al showed that JUnit and Robolectric are widely used testing tools in Android programming [16].…”

A Proposal of Advanced Widgets Learning Topic for Interactive Application in Android Programming Learning Assistance System

“…To implement the automatic assessment or validation, the application of an automatic testing tool appears to be essential. The study of Almedia et al showed that JUnit and Robolectric are the widely used testing tools in Android programming [34]. In the applications of unit testing, JUnit is leveraged to automate the creation of unit testing cases [35].…”