Overview of Testing in Android

Introduction

Testing is integral to software development, and Android app development is no different. Depending on the size and complexity of the application, we might choose to use automated testing or perform manual testing. Manual tests work well if our app contains just a few simple flows. As the complexity of the application increases, we can easily miss edge cases and introduce bugs. Every time a new version of the app is released, we need to retest the existing flows for regression.

Manual testing doesn’t scale well. We can use tools to set up automated tests to help create faster, repeatable, and actionable test executions.

Types of tests

We can classify tests based on their scope, goal, or execution environment.

Scope

Based on the scope of the test, we can put them into three different categories:

• Unit tests: These are used to test a method or class in isolation.

• Integration tests: There are used to test two or more components together.

• E2E tests: These are used to test an activity or fragment as a whole.