Monkey Test : Testing Application on Android devices

Monkey Test : Testing Application on Android devices :

The monkey tool runs in an adb shell directly on the device or emulator and generates pseudo-random streams of user and system events. In comparison, the monkey runner tool controls devices and emulators from a workstation by sending specific commands and events from an API.

The monkey runner tool provides these unique features for Android testing:

* Functional testing: monkey runner can run an automated start-to-finish test of an Android application. You provide input values with keystrokes or touch events, and view the results as screenshots.

* Regression testing - monkey runner can test application stability by running an application and comparing its output screenshots to a set of screenshots that are known to be correct.

UI/Application Exerciser Monkey:

The Monkey is a program that runs on your emulator or device and generates pseudo-random streams of user events such as clicks, touches, or gestures, as well as a number of system-level events. You can use the Monkey to stress-test applications that you are developing, in a random yet repeatable manner.

Basic Use of the Monkey

You can launch the Monkey using a command line on your development machine or from a script. Because the Monkey runs in the emulator/device environment, you must launch it from a shell in that environment. You can do this by prefacing adb shell to each command, or by entering the shell and entering Monkey commands directly.

The basic syntax is:
adb shell monkey [options]

With no options specified, the Monkey will launch in a quiet (non-verbose) mode, and will send events to any (and all) packages installed on your target. Here is a more typical command line, which will launch your application and send 50000 pseudo-random events to it:

adb shell monkey –p your.package.name – throttle 100 –v 50000

o -p
o --throttle
o -v
o 50000 <50000 events> (~30 minutes)

Use the Monkey to stress-test applications.
o Number of events
o Single package
o Event types and frequencies
o Debugging options.