Hands-On Selenium WebDriver with Java

Chapter 10. Beyond Selenium

This chapter closes this book by presenting several complementary technologies to Selenium. First, we analyze the basics of mobile apps and introduce Appium, a popular testing framework for mobile testing. Then, you will learn how to test REST (REpresentational State Transfer) services with an open source Java library called REST Assured. Finally, you will be introduced to alternative tools to Selenium WebDriver for implementing end-to-end tests for web applications, namely: Cypress, WebDriverIO, TestCafe, Puppeteer, and Playwright.

Mobile Apps

Mobile applications (usually called mobile apps, or simply apps) are software applications designed to run on mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, or wearables. There are two principal operating systems for mobile devices:

Android

An open source (Apache 2.0 license) mobile operating system based on a modified version of Linux. It was initially developed by a startup named Android, acquired by Google in 2005.

iOS

A proprietary mobile operating system created by Apple exclusively for its hardware (e.g., iPhone, iPad, or Watch).

A common way to classify mobile apps is as follows:

Native apps

Mobile apps developed for a particular mobile operating system (e.g., Android or iOS).

Web-based apps

Web applications rendered into a mobile browser (e.g., Chrome, Safari, or Firefox Mobile). These apps are typically designed to be responsive (i.e., adaptable to different screen sizes and viewports).