Automated Mobile Testing with Robot Framework and Appium in Docker

This guide demonstrates how to set up a Dockerized environment for automating mobile app tests using Robot Framework and Appium. This approach streamlines test execution, ensures environment consistency, and eliminates the need for local tool installations.

Automation Environment

• Appium Server container
• Robot Framework container
• Physical Mobile device
• Appium Inspector
• (optional) Scrcpy
• (optional) Visual Code with Dev Containers Extension

Setting up the Environment

Prerequisites

• Ensure Docker is installed and configured
• Ensure ADB is installed
• Device with developer mode active and USB Debugging enabled

Optional

• Enable device's Wireless Debugging
• Install Scrcpy

Steps

1. Open the terminal and navigate to your project directory

   cd path/to/project

2. Connect the device via USB to your computer

   Approve the connection on your device

3. (optional) Mirror the mobile device screen

   # Check if device is connected (attached)
   adb devices
   # Restart the adb server in tcpip mode on port 5555
   adb tcpip 5555
   # Mirror the device via wifi (enter the ip of your device)
   scrcpy --tcpip=192.168.15.59:5555

4. Run appium server container and Robot container

   # (First time) Build services
   docker compose build
   docker compose up -d
   # outputs
       # [+] Running 2/2
       # ✔ Container appium  Started 
       # ✔ Container robot   Started   

5. Check if the device is connected to the Appium Server

   # Executes "adb devices" commando inside appium docker
   docker exec appium adb devices

   Or if you follow step 6:

   # Kill adb server on your machine to disconnect the device
   adb kill-server
   # Check if the device is connected to the appium server
   docker exec appium adb devices
   # Mirror the device screen
   scrcpy --tcpip=192.168.15.59:5555

6. (Optional) Attach VS Code to the Robot container With the Dev Container extension, you can open any folder or repository inside a Docker container and take advantage of Visual Studio Code's full feature set.

7. Eventually you will ned to stop containers

   docker compose down

Tips for programming tests

Containers Host

Within the docker network, you can use the name of the container as an alias for the IP address.

Open Application    
...    remote_url=http://appium:4723
...    platformName=Android
...    automationName=UiAutomator2

Outside the docker network, you must provide the IP address. This is how you can identifying the IP address assigned to a container

docker inspect appium | grep IPAddress 
# Result
#    "SecondaryIPAddresses": null,
#    "IPAddress": "",
#        "IPAddress": "172.23.0.3",

How to configure Appium Inspector

1. Install Appium Inspector, or, access the web version

2. Fill in the following data:

   • Remote Host: The IP address of the Appium container
   • Remote Port: 4723
   • Capacility Builder
     • platformName: Android
     • automationName: UiAutomator2

3. Click the Start Session button

4. The inspection interface should be loaded

You don't need a thirdy party app to retrieve the target app package name

Eventually, you will need the package name of the tested app, you can achieve this using following commands:

# Enter the Appium container.
docker exec -it appium bash
# Connect to the Android device shell.
adb shell
# Get the package name of the app in focus.
dumpsys window | grep mCurrentFocus

Observations

This is a basic example. Customize it for your specific testing requirements.

Resources

Check these links for more information

• ADB official documentation
• Appium official documentation
• Appium Docker Image github repository
• Appium Inspector github repository
• Docker installation official documentation
• Robot Framework official documentation
• Robot Docker Image github repository
• Scrcpy github repository