Desired Capabilities

After we understand the tests framework, we can start to take a closer look on how Android app automation works

Underlying we are using Appium to drive native Android app automation

• Most concepts are similar for web and app automations, a few things maybe new to people who come from web automation world:

Desired Capabilities

• Desired capabilities are a set of keys and values (i.e., a map or hash) sent to the Appium server to tell the server what kind of automation session we're interested in starting up.
• There are various capabilities which can modify the behavior of the server during automation.
• For example, we could set the platformName capability to Android to tell Appium that we want an Android session, rather than an iOS one. See the capabilities doc for the complete list of capabilities available for Appium.
• For our sample repo, Desired Capabilities are defined either in profiles in magellan.json file or in ./conf/nightwatch.json file. You can specify to use which one in your command line.
• For example, in your command, you can specify it via --profile appium-ios-app, which means look up desired capability defined in profile style in magellan.json file.
• It is highly recommended to set the appPackage and appActivity capabilities in order to let Appium know exactly which package and activity should be launched for your application. Otherwise, Appium will try to determine these automatically from your app manifest. E.g.

    "appium-android-app": [
      {
        "browser": "Android_GoogleAPI_Emulator_Android_7_1_Android",
        "orientation": "portrait",
        "appium": {
          "app": "sauce-storage:AUT.apk",
          "platformName": "Android",
          "appiumVersion": "1.7.2",
          "fullReset": "true",
          "noReset": "false",
          "appActivity": "com.yourcompany.android.main.MainActivity",
          "appWaitActivity": "com.yourcompany.android.main.AnotherActivity"
        }
      }
    ],