How to test QR code online

In today’s time to ensure a seamless sharing of information, often businesses require their Web and Mobile applications to have QR codes so that their users can access it just by scanning a small QR code. This QR code when scanned gives a variety of data based upon the business requirement which also benefits in reducing the visible page size of the application.

Its use cases includes access to a restaurant’s extensive menu for a user to order food from, adding locations to offices, shops, institutions or any other place for directions, to transfer money to accounts or as an access control system to allow entry in restricted entry spaces.

What is QR code?

A QR code (quick response code) is a type of two dimensional (2D) bar code that is used to provide easy access to online information through the digital camera on a smartphone or tablet. It looks like a square with black and white pixels making a pattern, as seen in the image.

QR codes can store information apart from alphanumeric data, such as URLs, images, videos, and contact cards. A smartphone camera and a QR code scanner app are needed to read the QR Code. Most modern smartphones come with an in-built scanner or camera that can scan the QR code.

Benefits of using QR code

QR is used often in our day to day lives from the UPI payment scanners, to the ticket in metro, the Read More blocks on the products and many more places, where the information has to be presented concisely. Here some advantages of using QR Codes:

• QR Codes just require a mobile camera to be scanned and do not require any special device to interpret the message.
• They are versatile, they can encode almost all types of data e.g., numeric, alphabets, special and binary.

• They can store a good amount of information. Commonly, they can store up to 7089 digits or 4296 characters.

• They are usually very small in size. They require very little space on banners, products, or any other place they are used on. 

• They help the user in saving the data easily into their smartphones.

How to Test QR code?

As every web and mobile app requires extensive and thorough testing, applications having QR code will also require rigorous testing to check if they work expectedly. To test QR code functionality, it requires a real device with a camera and manually capturing the image of the code. But this poses a limitation on the testing coverage, as the testing shall be done only on limited type of mobile devices since scanning code requires real devices with a camera.

Now coming to real devices on cloud, since the image/QR code capture of the user’s app won’t be possible, hence the required testing cannot be done and needs some special software.

BrowserStack App Live provides out of the box feature of “Camera image injection” where this limitation can be overcome and QR code scanning functionality can be tested on multiple real cloud devices as it injects the image before capturing it and once the image is captured, it is replaced by the injected Image, eradicating the need of holding a real device camera and scanning the image.

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Testing QR code online using camera image injection: Example

Take the example of a QR code scanner app in the image shown below which captures the image of the QR code and converts it in the text linked to it. For testing such an instance, open the app Live Set the image injection capability, select the device and the session is started. After the session starts, upload the image using camera image injection and start using the app.

Step 1 For testing the QR code scanning in the application, upload the .ipa, .apk, .or aab file on App Live as seen below

Step 2 After uploading the App, the image injection capability needs to be enabled. For enabling the same, click on the settings icon next to the app.

Step 3 Image injection can be enabled by toggling the button next to it and selecting the device the test needs to run on.

Step 4 After selecting the device, the session will start with the app opened which was uploaded in the selected device. Inject the image that needs to be captured using image injection tool in the tool bar and upload the image by clicking “Upload new asset” button.

Step 5 When the image is uploaded successfully, click the button to capture the QR code.

Step 6 The camera of the device will be launched and black screen will be shown, click on camera shutter button to capture the image.

Step 7 Once the image is captured it will be replaced by the previously injected image in the result section as shown below.

Conclusion

By using BrowserStack App Live’s camera image injection feature, QR code functionality on any mobile app can be tested on different android and iOS real devices on cloud by simply reading the code and injecting it into the camera. This industry first feature allows the QAs to test on a fleet of different real devices without the need to buy them using its cloud infrastructure, giving accurate test results.

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