Basic Appium Automation: Part 1- Appium Locators

Types of Locators available in Appium 2 and How to Find Them

These previous articles:

• Set up Appium 2 to Run XCUITest (for iOS)
• Your First Complete Appium Test against iOS Simulator
• Drive a real iOS Device with Appium 2 (XCUITest)
• How to use Appium Inspector.

serve as an introduction to Mobile Test Automation with Appium 2. Yes, mobile test automation is more complex than web test automation, with more terminologies, such as Simulator, Device, Inspector and XCUITest (and later the similar set for Andriod platform).

Starting from this article, I will go back to basics on starting hands-on Test Automation with Appium 2. To automate (or another term, interact with) one control on an app: You need to locate it first.

Locating Element is the first step to Drive a Control

Appium, similar to Selenium, consists of two steps:

To drive a control (on an App), we first need to locate it. The pattern is simple and intuitive, and has been proven in Selenium WebDriver.

1. Locate an element
   A typical mobile app consists of numerous controls (or better name: elements). UI elements can be containers (such as a View or Pop-up Alert Window), or a specific control (such as a button or text field).