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Integrate Your Test Suite with BrowserStack

BrowserStack Python SDK supports a plug-and-play integration. Run your entire test suite in parallel with a few steps!

Ready to integrate your existing Python Appium test suite with BrowserStack? This document walks you through the simple steps to connect your tests to our cloud infrastructure and start running them on real devices. You’ll learn how to configure your environment, upload your app, and execute tests seamlessly on BrowserStack’s device cloud.

Prerequisites

An existing appium based automated test suite.
Python3 and Pip3 is installed on your machine.

Looking for a starter project? Get started with our Python sample project.

Integration steps

Complete the following steps to integrate your Python test suite using BrowserStack SDK.

Set BrowserStack credentials

Saving your BrowserStack credentials as environment variables makes it simple to run your test suite from your local or CI environment.

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Install BrowserStack Python SDK

Execute the following commands to install BrowserStack Python SDK for plug-and-play integration of your test suite with BrowserStack.

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Unable to install BrowserStack SDK?

If you can’t install BrowserStack SDK due to sudo privilege issues, create a virtual environment and execute the adjacent installation commands again.

      
            macOS or Linux
          
            Windows
          
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python3 -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
python3 -m venv env
.\env\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Upload app

Upload your Android (.apk) or iOS (.ipa) apps to BrowserStack servers using one of the following ways:

Upload app using the App Automate dashboard

On the App Automate dashboard, click the Upload button on the top-right corner. Select the app you want to upload from your filesystem.

Upload apps from the App Automate Dashboard

Upload app using App Management UI

To upload an app using the App Management UI, follow the steps below:

Navigate to App Automate dashboard, on the sidebar, click App Management.
On the App Management UI, click Upload App.
Select the app you want to upload from your filesystem. If you are uploading the app using a public URL, paste the URL of your app in the or upload from URL box.
After selecting the app, choose the App Automate framework you want to use for testing. You can optionally add flags and a custom ID.
Click Upload. The app is uploaded to the BrowserStack servers. You’ll receive an App ID, which you can use to run tests.

Upload apps from the filesystem using App Management UI

To manage your apps, refer to the documentation on managing apps using App Management UI.

Upload app using REST API

To upload an app using filesystem/public URL via the REST API, use the cURL example:

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Facing issues with app upload? See the Troubleshooting section.

Create your BrowserStack config file

Once you have installed the SDK, create a browserstack.yml config file at the root level of your project. This file holds all the required capabilities to run tests on BrowserStack.

Set app to be tested

The app property determines the app to be tested. You can upload an Android app (.apk or .aab file) or an iOS app (.ipa file) from your local filesystem.

Supported method	Description
path(Recommended)	SDK uploads the app using the specified relative or absolute path. Eg: `app: ./SampleApp.apk`.

Check out how to create IPA files for iOS app testing on BrowserStack.

Other acceptable app property values

You can use BrowserStack REST API to upload your app.

Following is a sample response that is generated when you upload an app using any of the mentioned methods:

 {
    "app_url":"bs://f7c874f21852ba57957a3fdc33f47514288c4ba4", 
    "custom_id":"SampleApp",
    "shareable_id":"exampleuser/SampleApp"
 }

The following table explains the other acceptable app property values:

Supported method	Description
app_url	Uploaded app’s `app_url` is a valid value for `app` property. Eg: `app: bs://45e1c1473b17b7643aed1761f51cb5cdf3d3e334`
custom_id	If you’ve defined a `custom_id` while uploading your app, the same value can be used as `app` property value. Eg: `app: CalculatorApp`
shareable_id	If you wish to test an app uploaded by someone else from your organization, a `shareable_id` can be used as the `app` property value. Eg: `app: exampleuser/CalculatorApp`

Check out how to specify the application under test to understand the above options better.

Set platforms to test on

Set the devices you want to test under the platforms object.

Do you want to dynamically configure platforms?

To dynamically configure platforms across different tests, you can comment out the platforms capability while still passing platform-specific capabilities.

For a complete list of available devices and their versions, refer to the App Automate supported devices page.

BrowserStack Reporting (part 1/2)

You can leverage BrowserStack’s extensive reporting features using the following capabilities:

The projectName and buildName config must be static and not change across different runs of the same build. This is a deviation in approach as specified by BrowserStack Automate or App Automate as Test Reporting & Analytics will automatically identify different build runs.

Restrict the characters in your projectName and buildName to alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9), underscores (_), colons (:), square brackets ([, ]), and hyphens (-). Any other character will be replaced with an underscore (_).

Create browserstack.yml file

Copy the code snippet to create browserstack.yml file in the root folder of your test suite.

You can also pass regular expressions (regex) in deviceName and platformVersion capabilities if your device selection is more flexible. Check out how to use regular expressions to specify device attributes.

Enable Local testing and debugging features

To enhance your testing experience on BrowserStack, you can enable additional features such as Local Testing and debugging features by adding the respective capabilities in your browserstack.yml file.

Enable BrowserStack Local

To enable testing of apps hosted on your local machine or behind a firewall, you can use BrowserStack Local Testing. This feature creates a secure tunnel between your local machine and the BrowserStack cloud, allowing you to test your apps in real-time. For more information, refer to the Local Testing documentation.

browserstackLocal: true

Enable Debugging features

Visual logs enable you to automatically capture screenshots for various Appium commands executed in your test session.
Network logs help you to get a clear picture of all the network requests (e.g. REST API calls) originating from your app, and the time taken for each of these requests. For more information, refer to the documentation on view logs and debug tests.
By default, BrowserStack provides prettified session logs, screenshots on every failed Appium command, and a video of the entire test. Additionally, you can enable the following logs by setting the respective capabilities in your browserstack.yml file:

debug: true
networkLogs: true

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Use our Capability Generator to select from a comprehensive set of options you can use to customize your tests.

BrowserStack Reporting (part 2/2)

Test assertions are specific to selected language frameworks. BrowserStack requires explicit instruction to determine whether your tests have passed or failed based on the assertions in your test script.

Mark session name

You can use the sessionName capability to give your session a name (usually describing the test case) so that it is easy for you to debug later.

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Mark test as passed or failed

To mark whether your test has passed or failed on BrowserStack, use the following Javascript executor in your test script.

The arguments passed in the Javascript method for setting the status and the corresponding reason of the test are status and reason.

status accepts either passed or failed as the value
reason accepts a value in string datatype

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Run your test suite

Your test suite is now ready to run on BrowserStack. Execute the following command from the project’s root directory(android/ios) to run your test suite with BrowserStack.

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To find out the location of the BrowserStack SDK log files, refer to BrowserStack SDK Log Files. If you are looking for more information, see FAQ documentation.

After you run your test, visit the App Automate dashboard to view your test results.

Advanced features and use cases

Here’s a list of features and capabilities you may find useful.

Accept insecure certificates

The acceptInsecureCerts capability suppresses warning about self-signed certificates usually found in staging environments.

Capability	Expected values
`acceptInsecureCerts`	A boolean. Default is `False`. `True` if you want to accept all SSL certificates.

Change device orientation

The deviceOrientation capability changes the default mobile screen orientation for your tests on BrowserStack infra.

If the parameter is set at the root level, its applicable to all the devices in the test.
If you wish to apply it to a specific device, set it at the platform level which has the device details.

Capability	Description	Expected values
`deviceOrientation`	Set the orientation of your app before beginning your test	A string. Default orientation is `portrait`. Supported orientations: `portrait` and `landscape`.

Simulate IP geolocation

The geoLocation capability lets you test your app across different countries.

Note that this capability is supported on the Enterprise plan only. You can contact sales to get an Enterprise plan for your account.

Capability	Description	Expected values
`geoLocation`	Set the country code you want your test to detect	A string. An ISO 2 country code `FR` for France, `CN` for China Check out the complete list of 45+ countries we support.

Simulate network conditions

The networkProfile capability lets you test your app under different network conditions.

Capability	Description	Expected values
`networkProfile`	Set the network profile to start the test with	A string. `2g-gprs-good`, `4g-lte-advanced-lossy`

Others

Following are a few additional links to documentation pages that might help with your test scenarios:

Troubleshooting

Here’s a list of troubleshooting options you may find useful.

Errors faced during app upload

Ensure you provide a valid app file and path while uploading your app to BrowserStack. If you running into an error during app upload, it is most likely due to an invalid app URL/path given. You can upload an app using the App Automate dashboard, App Management UI, or REST API. For detailed information on uploading and managing apps, refer to the documentation on Uploading and managing apps.

Invalid device OS combination errors

If you face errors related to invalid device OS combinations, ensure that the device and OS version combinations you are trying to run your tests on are supported on BrowserStack.

For detailed information on selecting devices, refer to the Select devices documentation.
To use regular expression to specify device attributes, refer to the Using regex to select devices documentation.
To check the list of supported OS versions for devices on BrowserStack, refer to the App Automate supported devices documentation.

Resigned Apps and Third-Party Library Integration Issues

Uploading an unsigned version of an Android app will require us to sign it with our certificates before installing it on our devices. In the same manner, any uploaded .aab files will be converted into a universal APK and signed with our certificates.
If BrowserStack resigns the apps, third-party library integrations such as Google Firebase services, Google Maps SDK, Facebook SDK, etc., may not function properly if the use of API keys is restricted based on the SHA-1 certificate fingerprint of the app’s signing key.
To prevent this issue, it’s recommended to sign the APK with your own certificates before uploading it to BrowserStack.

Disabling Re-Signing for iOS Apps

If you upload an iOS app, we will re-sign the app with our own provisioning profile to be able to install your app on our devices during test execution.
However, if your app is signed using the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, you can disable this behavior to test features such as push notifications on BrowserStack devices.

Capability	Expected values
`resignApp`	A boolean. To disable re-signing, set the capability to `false` in your Appium test scripts.

Next steps

Once you have successfully integrated your test suite with BrowserStack, you might want to check the following:

Generate a list of capabilities that you want to use in tests
Find information about your Projects, Builds and Sessions using our REST APIs
Set up your CI/CD: Jenkins, Bamboo, TeamCity, Azure, CircleCI, TravisCI.

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