Setting up Grid with Appium

Selenium Grid is used to run multiple tests simultaneously on different browsers and platforms. Grid uses the hub-node concept. The hub is the central point wherein you load your tests. Nodes are the Appium instances that will execute the tests that you loaded on the hub.

Features of Mobile Grid

1. Execute multiple instances of Appium tests in parallel which uses the same or different code base
2. Reduces batch processing time. This is especially useful if you are testing on different platforms and SDK
3. Code need not be on the system they execute. You can use any machine that contain the code and execute it. It will be send to the grid
4. Multi platform and multi devices execute from your machines. You can shared the resources in your team instead of passing the devices around

Steps to setup

1. Download Selenium Grid from here
2. Make sure you have set up Appium. If not , refer to this page (OS X) or this (Windows)

Grid

1. Input this in your terminal or command prompt

java -jar selenium-server-standalone.jar -role hub -port 4444 -host "My-Hub"

If you have difficulty finding your hostname , go to your terminal or command prompt

hostname

Your hostname will be displayed.

You will see a message something like this if Selenium Grid is launched successfully

10:17:28.995 INFO [GridLauncherV3.parse] - Selenium server version: 3.141.59, revision: e82be7d358
10:17:29.145 INFO [GridLauncherV3.lambda$buildLaunchers$5] - Launching Selenium Grid hub on port 4444
2020-04-20 10:17:29.657:INFO::main: Logging initialized @970ms to org.seleniumhq.jetty9.util.log.StdErrLog
10:17:29.924 INFO [Hub.start] - Selenium Grid hub is up and running
10:17:29.926 INFO [Hub.start] - Nodes should register to http://My-Hub:4444/grid/register/
10:17:29.926 INFO [Hub.start] - Clients should connect to http://My-Hub:4444/wd/hub

Node

The next step we need is to setup the node. Nodes are the Appium instances that will execute the tests that you loaded on the hub. Connect your device (I am using an iOS device here) to your node machine. Let’s call this machine with hostname “My-Node”. If you do not know your node hostname , refer to the previous section.

Input this in terminal or command prompt , saying we are using port 4722

appium --port 4722 --nodeconfig config_ios.json

The JSON file (I call it “config_ios.json”) is in the section below

Executing the script

Usually if you are not using Selenium Grid, you may be getting your appium driver like the below (Java) :

driver = new AppiumDriver<>(new URL("http://0.0.0.0:4723/wd/hub"), capabilities);

Instead , we should be calling the Hub address (“My-Hub”

driver = new AppiumDriver<>(new URL("http://My-Hub:4444/wd/hub"), capabilities);

It will return the Appium driver and execute your test script on the node machine.

JSON File (node)

{
"capabilities":
[
{
"deviceName": "iPhone 10",
"platformVersion": "13.1.2",
"maxInstances": 1,
"platformName": "iOS",
"browserName": "Safari"
}
],
    "configuration": {
        "cleanUpCycle": 2000,
        "timeout": 30000,
        "proxy": "org.openqa.grid.selenium.proxy.DefaultRemoteProxy",
        "host": "My-Node",
        "maxSession": 1,
        "register": true,
        "registerCycle": 5000,
        "hubPort": 4444,
        "hubHost": "192.168.1.1",
        "hub": "http://192.168.1.1:4444",
        "url":"http://192.168.1.2:4722/wd/hub",
        "role": "node"
    }
}

That’s it ! Let me know if you face any problem.

Created : 20 April 2020

Updated : 20 April 2020

Story extracted from : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/setting-up-grid-appium-ivan-tay/