Adb Screen Recorder for UI tests: seeing is believing

How many times have users and clients said "why haven't you tested this?". Test reports and coverage percentages don't mean much to project managers, users, or people who haven't spent hours writing Espresso tests. ADB Screen Recorder makes it easy to record an individual video file for each Espresso test you run on each device.

Getting started

This plugin requires Gradle 7.1+.

Add jitpack to your settings.gradle

pluginManagement {
    repositories {
        ...
        maven {
            url "https://jitpack.io/"
        }
    }
}

Put the plugin on the classpath:

   dependencies {
       classpath "com.github.UstadMobile.AdbScreenRecorder:lib-gradle-plugin:0.1-alpha11"
   }

Add the plugin and dependencies to your build.gradle:

//Apply the plugin
plugins {
    id "com.ustadmobile.adbscreenrecorder"
}

...

//Add the dependency for the test rule
dependencies {
    androidTestImplementation "com.github.UstadMobile.AdbScreenRecorder.lib-client:0.1-alpha11"
}

//Optionally configure the output directory
adbScreenRecord {
   reportDir = "$buildDir/reports/adbScreenRecord"
}

Add the test rule to your UI tests:

//Annotate the test using @AdbScreenRecord to set a user-friendly description to appear in the test.
// If you don't use the annotation, then the class and method name will be used.
@AdbScreenRecord("Requirement 1: Screen Name")
@RunWith(AndroidJUnit4::class)
class ScreenNameFragmentTest {

    @JvmField
    @Rule
    val screenRecordRule = AdbScreenRecordRule()

    @AdbScreenRecord("Requirement 1a: Screen Name will make sun raise in some situation when something happens")
    @Test
    fun givenSomeSituation_whenSomethingHappens_thenTheSunWillRaise() {

    }

}

Now run the connectedCheck task as normal:

$ ./gradlew app:connectedCheck

And that's it! Now just open up build/reports/adbScreenRecord and you'll find a report page showing videos of every test.

How it works

This plugin uses the adb command to record videos of each test running. The plugin will create a mini http server for each connected device, and setup adb reverse port forwarding so that the test rule on the client can connect to it and send requests to start/stop recording as tests start and finish. The port forwarding operates independently of the connectivity of the device and works as long as adb is connected.

Android 5 limitations and workaround

Emulators running Android 5 and below do not support adb screenrecord as per this issue. AdbScreenRecord supports using the recordmydesktop command on Ubuntu (and possibly other Linux) versions as a workaround. For this to work, you must install the required packages:

$ sudo apt-get install wmctrl recordmydesktop

You must also ensure that the emulator window is not covered by any other window.