Write a Test (dotnet)

The Appium dotnet Client is an official Appium client in C#. This driver is an extension of the Selenium C# client. It has all the functionalities of the regular driver, but add Appium-specific methods on top of this. The driver is available on the public NuGet Gallery as Appium.WebDriver.

Now, we get inside the directory and create a new NUnit project. We will also add the references to the Appium.Net driver, and other dependencies.

cd dotnet-client
dotnet new nunit --name appiumtest 

cd appiumtest

# This will install the latest 5.x version
dotnet add package Appium.WebDriver  --prerelease
dotnet add package Newtonsoft.Json --version 13.0.3

Once this is done, your project should have a placeholder file UnitTest1.cs. We will replace the code to include the OpenQA namespaces, an initialization of the driver, and the actual test.

UnitTest1.cs

using OpenQA.Selenium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Appium;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Appium.Android;
using OpenQA.Selenium.Appium.Enums;

namespace appiumtest;

public class Tests
{
    private AndroidDriver _driver;

    [OneTimeSetUp]
    public void SetUp()
    {
        var serverUri = new Uri(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("APPIUM_HOST") ?? "http://127.0.0.1:4723/");
        var driverOptions = new AppiumOptions() {
            AutomationName = AutomationName.AndroidUIAutomator2,
            PlatformName = "Android",
            DeviceName = "Android Emulator",
        };

        driverOptions.AddAdditionalAppiumOption("appPackage", "com.android.settings");
        driverOptions.AddAdditionalAppiumOption("appActivity", ".Settings");
        // NoReset assumes the app com.google.android is preinstalled on the emulator
        driverOptions.AddAdditionalAppiumOption("noReset", true);

        _driver = new AndroidDriver(serverUri, driverOptions, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(180));
        _driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
    }

    [OneTimeTearDown]
    public void TearDown()
    {
        _driver.Dispose();
    }

    [Test]
    public void TestBattery()
    {
        _driver.StartActivity("com.android.settings", ".Settings");
        _driver.FindElement(By.XPath("//*[@text='Battery']")).Click();
    }
}

Note

It's not within the scope of this guide to give a complete run-down on the dotnet client library or everything that's happening here, so we'll leave the code itself unexplained in detail for now. You may want to read up particularly on Appium Capabilities in addition to familiarizing yourself with the dotnet client driver documentation for a fuller explanation of the various API commands you see and what their purpose is.

Basically, this code is doing the following:

1. Defining a set of "Capabilities" (parameters) to send to the Appium server so Appium knows what kind of thing you want to automate. Some of these parameters can be overriden using environment variables.
2. Starting an Appium session on the built-in Android settings app.
3. Finding the "Battery" list item and clicking it.
4. Ending the Appium session.

That's it! Let's give it a try. Before you run the test, make sure that you have an Appium server running in another terminal session, otherwise you'll get an error about not being able to connect to one. Then, you can execute the script:

dotnet test

# Example output:
# Starting test execution, please wait...
# A total of 1 test files matched the specified pattern.

# Passed!  - Failed:     0, Passed:     1, Skipped:     0, Total:     1, Duration: 323 ms - appiumtest.dll (net7.0)

If all goes well, you'll see the Settings app open up and navigate to the "Battery" view in the emulator before the app closes again.

Congratulations, you've started your Appium journey! Read on for some next steps to explore.