How to use TouchActions on iOS simulator?

Support
1

I have Selenium WebDriver tests that work fine on desktop chrome and firefox. I run them using Saucelabs. To start the browsers I just instantiate a new RemoteWebDriver.
Now I also want to test my website against Android/iOS. So I use Saucelabs to run on both Android and iOS(ipad) simulators. For both Android and iOS I use Appium.

In my tests I have some advanced user interactions, like drag and drop:

	new Actions(driver).dragAndDrop(entity, webElement)
		.build()
		.perform();

Executing the above code on desktop AND on Appium Android simulator works perfectly fine. However, running the same on Appium iOS simulator gives me the ‘Not yet implemented’ error.
I tried searching the Appium documentation and these forums to find a solution. I changed the code above into the following:

	IOSDriver iosDriver = (IOSDriver)driver;
	iosDriver.context("NATIVE_APP");
	
	new TouchAction(iosDriver)
		.press(entity.getLocation().x, entity.getLocation().y)
		.waitAction(500)
		.moveTo(webElement.getLocation().x, webElement.getLocation().y)
		.waitAction(500)
		.release()
		.perform();
	
	iosDriver.context("WEBVIEW_1");

These coordinates might be off, because of the offset problems I read about, but at least it should run without problems.
Next to the above I also instantiate my WebDriver by using the IOSDriver instead of the RemoteWebDriver.

        WebDriver driver = new IOSDriver(url, caps);

This now gives me the following error: ‘Not implemented in this context, try switching into or out of a web view’.

I am out of ideas on how to get this to work.

2

Yes in WebContext, I don’t think you can use touch action yet, it relies on Chromedriver.

Try to pass elements instead of coordinate.

1 Like
3

I also tried with webelements. Didn’t work.
Like I said, we are using saucelabs. I made a little example code:

import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

import org.openqa.selenium.By;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebElement;
import org.openqa.selenium.interactions.Actions;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.DesiredCapabilities;
import org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class TestExampleDnD {
 
public final static String SAUCE_USER_NAME = "xxx";
public final static String SAUCE_API_KEY = "xxx";

	@Test
	public void dragAndDrop() throws MalformedURLException {
		URL url = new URL("http://" + SAUCE_USER_NAME + ":" + SAUCE_API_KEY + "@ondemand.saucelabs.com:80/wd/hub");
		DesiredCapabilities caps = null;
		WebDriver driver = null;
		
		String[] browsers = {"chrome", "android", "ios"};
		for (String browser: browsers) {
			switch(browser) {
			case "chrome": 
				caps = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
				caps.setCapability("platform", "Windows 8.1");
				caps.setCapability("version", "43.0");
				caps.setCapability("screenResolution", "1280x1024");
				driver = new RemoteWebDriver(url, caps);
				break;
			case "android": 
				caps = DesiredCapabilities.android();
				caps.setCapability("appiumVersion", "1.4.0");
				caps.setCapability("deviceName","android");
				caps.setCapability("deviceOrientation", "portrait");
				caps.setCapability("browserName", "browser");
				caps.setCapability("platformName", "android");
				caps.setCapability("platformVersion", "5.1");
				driver = new RemoteWebDriver(url, caps);
				break;
			case "ios":
				caps = DesiredCapabilities.iphone();
				caps.setCapability("appiumVersion", "1.4.0");
				caps.setCapability("deviceName","iPad Simulator");
				caps.setCapability("deviceOrientation", "portrait");
				caps.setCapability("platformVersion","8.2");
				caps.setCapability("platformName", "iOS");
				caps.setCapability("browserName", "Safari");
				driver = new RemoteWebDriver(url, caps);
				break;
			}
		
			//Actual test
			driver.get("http://jqueryui.com/droppable/");
			WebElement iFrame = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".demo-frame"));
			driver.switchTo().frame(iFrame);
			WebElement draggable = driver.findElement(By.id("draggable"));
			WebElement droppable = driver.findElement(By.id("droppable"));
			
			new Actions(driver)
				.dragAndDrop(draggable, droppable)
				.build()
				.perform();
			
			driver.quit();
		}
	}
}

Running this, both chrome and android pass, but ios fails with not yet implemented. Can someone please tell me if it is possible (and what code I have to use) to make this example work?

4

Hey there
It’s been mentioned here that swipes in general break on the iOS simulator due to apples ui automation framework, so touch actions won’t work on the simiulator either.

I have had success however calling out this program in my tests as a workaround.

Hope you find it helpful. Maybe you could set this up somehow with sauce labs?

Good luck!
Eric

5

So, there is no proper/easy way to get drag and drop actions working on Safari on an iOS simulator?

6

HI @arson,
I can’t speak for Safari, but for native apps, Apple’s UI Automation Instrumentation swipes are broken in the simulator.