Method invocation guided GUI testing of android applications

Abstract

We propose a novel automated GUI testing technique for Android applications that can guide the test execution towards the invocation of specific methods. By checking whether the method written by developers is invoked or not, we expect benefits such as easier failure reproduction or more efficient integration test generation for code changes. We propose a modified Android environment that can notify an automated testing tool about the invocation of a given set of methods. Using this environment, we introduce a new search strategy with method invocation guidance on automated app testing. We apply the strategy on the model constructed with APE and report its effectiveness with a comparative study.