Launch an Appium Flutter driver session on Kobiton (Beta)

Learn how to perform automation testing using the Appium Flutter driver on Kobiton devices.

Prerequisites

  • Familiarity with creating, signing, and building Flutter apps.

  • Familiarity with writing and running Appium tests.

Preprocess your Flutter App

The Appium Flutter Driver uses the Dart VM Service Protocol with the extension ext.flutter.driver, similar to Flutter Driver, to control the Flutter app-under-test (AUT). This needs to be enabled in the AUT before the app can be tested with Appium Flutter Driver and can be done by following the steps below:

Open your Flutter project in your favorite IDE.

In the pubspec.yaml file, add the following dependencies:

#...
dev_dependencies:
  test: any
  flutter_test:
    sdk: flutter
  flutter_driver:
    sdk: flutter
#...

Both libraries provide functions and APIs to write tests for Flutter apps.

Run the following command to install the dev_dependencies that you added in the previous step.

flutter pub get

Now edit the lib/main.dart file in your Flutter project and add the following code statement.

import 'package:flutter_driver/driver_extension.dart';

This statement imports the driver_extension.dart file from the flutter_driver library and is the first step to enable the Flutter Driver extension.

Add the following code statement in the lib/main.dart file of your Flutter project to run the enableFlutterDriverExtension() function.

void main() {
  // This line enables the extension
  enableFlutterDriverExtension();

  runApp(const MyApp());
}

Check out the article about enableFlutterDriverExtension function to learn more about its powers.

Build your Flutter App

After you have enabled the Flutter Driver extension, you can now build your app for testing.

Open your Flutter project in your favorite IDE or open a terminal in the root directory of your Flutter project.

Choose a device type (Android emulator/real device or iOS real device) to build your app and run one of the following commands:

  • Android real device

  • Android emulator

  • iOS real device

flutter build apk --debug
flutter build apk --debug
flutter build ipa --debug

The corresponding output file path of the above commands:

  • Android real device

  • Android emulator

  • iOS real device

{project-root}/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/

{project-root}/build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/

{project-root}/build/ios/ipa/

Upload your Flutter App

Upload the Flutter App to the Kobiton App Repository or a cloud storage of your choice.

Configure Appium Capabilities in your test script

The Appium Flutter driver is supported only via our basic Appium 2 server functionality. Follow this document to prepare your test script for running a basic Appium 2 server session on Kobiton devices.

Then, change the value of 'appium:automationName' to 'Flutter' to use the Appium Flutter driver.

Example Android capabilities:

const capabilities = {
    'platformName':'Android'
    'kobiton:app': 'https://kobiton-us-east.s3.amazonaws.com/.../flutter_app.apk',
    'appium:udid': '39201F****01XV',

    'appium:automationName': 'Flutter', // -> required to use Appium Flutter Driver
    'kobiton:runtime':'appium', // -> required to use Basic Appium Server
}

Example iOS capabilities:

const capabilities = {
'platformName': 'iOS',
'appium:autoAcceptAlerts': true,
'kobiton:app': 'https://kobiton-us-east.s3.amazonaws.com/.../flutter_app.ipa',
'appium:udid': '00008020-0004***41123402E',

    'appium:automationName': 'Flutter', // -> required to use Appium Flutter Driver
    'kobiton:runtime':'appium', // -> required to use Basic Appium Server
}

Run the script to start the Appium Flutter driver automation session.

Limitations

  • All limitations for Appium Server session apply (see here).

  • Only Android devices hosted in Standard mode are supported at this time.