Standalone Snippet App Example

This tutorial shows you how to create a standalone Mobly snippet app. To create a snippet app that controls (instruments) another app under test, please see Example 2.

Tutorial

1. Use Android Studio to create a new app project.

2. Link against Mobly Snippet Lib in your build.gradle file

   dependencies {
     implementation 'com.google.android.mobly:mobly-snippet-lib:1.3.1'
   }
   

3. Write a Java class implementing Snippet and add methods to trigger the behaviour that you want. Annotate them with @Rpc

   package com.my.app;
   ...
   public class ExampleSnippet implements Snippet {
     @Rpc(description='Returns a string containing the given number.')
     public String getFoo(Integer input) {
       return "foo " + input;
     }
   
     @Override
     public void shutdown() {}
   }
   

4. Add any classes that implement the Snippet interface in your AndroidManifest.xml application section as meta-data

   <manifest
       xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
       package="com.my.app">
     <application>
       <meta-data
           android:name="mobly-snippets"
           android:value="com.my.app.test.MySnippet1,
                          com.my.app.test.MySnippet2" />
       ...
   

5. Add an instrumentation tag to your AndroidManifest.xml so that the framework can launch your server through an instrument command.

   <manifest
       xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
       package="com.my.app">
     <application>...</application>
     <instrumentation
         android:name="com.google.android.mobly.snippet.ServerRunner"
         android:targetPackage="com.my.app" />
   </manifest>
   

6. Build your apk and install it on your phone

7. In your Mobly python test, connect to your snippet .apk in setup_class

   class HelloWorldTest(base_test.BaseTestClass):
     def setup_class(self):
       self.ads = self.register_controller(android_device)
       self.dut1 = self.ads[0]
       self.dut1.load_snippet(name='snippet', package='com.my.app.test')
   

8. Invoke your needed functionality within your test

   def test_get_foo(self):
     actual_foo = self.dut1.snippet.getFoo(5)
     asserts.assert_equal("foo 5", actual_foo)
   

Running the example code

This folder contains a fully working example of a standalone snippet apk.

1. Compile the example

   ./gradlew examples:ex1_standalone_app:assembleDebug
   

2. Install the apk on your phone

   adb install -r ./examples/ex1_standalone_app/build/outputs/apk/debug/ex1_standalone_app-debug.apk
   

3. Use snippet_shell from mobly to trigger getFoo():

   snippet_shell.py com.google.android.mobly.snippet.example1
   
   >>> print(s.help())
   Known methods:
     getBar(String) returns String  // Returns the given string with the prefix "bar"
     getFoo(Integer) returns String  // Returns the given integer with the prefix "foo"
   
   >>> s.getFoo(5)
   u'foo 5'