The Difference between Appium and Espresso

Mobile application testing has evolved over the years and this is all because of the innovative tools fiercely encroaching the app markets. Automation testing is fundamentally imperative to develop high performing mobile applications.It is impossible to do without Automation testing tools in Continuous Integration and Mobile Devops environment. Hence we can see a lot of Automation testing tools with unique capabilities introduced in the mobile app market. In this blog we will explore the features of Appium and Espresso and make note of the capabilities which makes them so appealing to stand tall in the mobile app market. Also we will compare their features which gives tough competition in the market.

This key differences between Appium and Espresso are

What is Appium ?

Appium is an open-source automation tool for testing native applications, mobile-web applications, and hybrid applications. You can perform Appium automation testing on both ios and android mobile devices as well as windows desktop using a standard web driver API.  You can write Appium scripts in all types of programming languages like C, PHP, Python, C#, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, etc as it supports selenium webdriver supporting all types of programming languages.

The benefits of using Appium

Supports Cross Platform test automation

Appium supports test automation on both Android and IOS devices. Appium with the help of JSON wire protocol interacts with the server and the automation is performed on the devices through the UIAutomator2 framework for Android and XCUIT framework for IOS devices. Before Appium was only Mobile Restricted, now it can also be used for automating windows desktop applications. Appium being multiplatform support is the reason it gained very high popularity and is still used as one of the most crucial automation testing platforms.

Supports Multiple Programming Languages

Appium script can be written in different types of programming languages as it uses the selenium webdriver library which supports all types of programming languages. This gives it the freedom to interact with any kind of framework.

Open Source

Appium was developed by Sauce labs and available as an open source framework. This makes it flexible to work on Android and IOS, native, hybrid and web applications  and simulators and emulators as well. Appium has a large open community, giving the chance for the new coders to explore and learn from the platform.

What is Espresso

Espresso is a native open source framework created by Google for Automated Android UI Testing. As per google, Espresso provides a set of API’s for developers to write Reliable android UI Test to simulate user interactions with the app.It automatically synchronizes the test actions with the user interface of the mobile app.

Advantages of  Espresso

Automatic Synchronization

Espresso provides the automatic synchronization of UI elements and test actions. It automatically detects when the main thread is idle and accordingly runs the test commands at the appropriate time.That’s the reason Espresso is more stable unlike Appium as it does not involve any server communication.

Intuitive API

Espresso has a very lightweight and compact to use API with only three components.

viewMatchers, viewActions and viewAssertions. These API’s are also easy to maintain and customizable.

Minimal Integrations with Android Studio

Espresso comes integrated with Android Studio(a native Android development Environment).Hence minimal efforts are required in the setup process as compared to Appium.