Forced action when the application is not idle in Espresso - Android

Question

Many people asked how to make the Espresso framework wait for the background task to complete before completing an action or approving something. I understand that in such situations IdlingResource is often the case.

My question is the opposite. I have a countdown that Espresso is waiting for by default because the ProgressBar is being updated. During this countdown, I have a kind of Cancel button to stop the countdown.

In the test I want to write, the background task will be set and check that the cancel button will return the application back to the previous screen. Now he is waiting for the completion of the background task before trying to click the "Cancel" button, but the "Cancel" button disappears after the task is completed.

How can I make Espresso perform an action (click Cancel) even if the application is not idle?

Answer 1

To be honest, I do not think this is possible. I have the same problem. I fixed this with UIAutomator to click (in your case) the cancel button.

In my case, I had a login button, after which a map appeared. The application is never in standby mode after pressing the "Login" button or even only in MapFragment (a problem for espresso), so I had to use UIAutomator for the "Login" button and check if the map appears after logging in.

I inserted this depending on the application:

androidTestImplementation 'androidx.test.uiautomator:uiautomator:2.2.0' 

And in my LoginTest.kt file:

 import androidx.test.uiautomator.* //your imports here @RunWith(AndroidJUnit4::class) @LargeTest class LoginTest { @Rule @JvmField //your rules here lateinit var mDevice:UiDevice @Before fun setUp() { //your setUp stuff mDevice = UiDevice.getInstance(InstrumentationRegistry.getInstrumentation()) } @Test fun checkLogin(){ onView(withId(R.id.loginBtn)).perform(click()) //goes to LoginFragment mDevice.findObject(UiSelector().text("LOGIN")).click() //clicks login button //this is where I had to use the UIAutomator because espresso would never be //idle after the login button mDevice.wait(Until.findObject(By.text("YOU HAVE LOGGED IN")),15000) //this waits until the object with the given text appears, max. wait time is 15 seconds //as espresso would still not be idle, I had to check if the login was successful //with (again) the help of UIAutomator } @After fun tearDown() { } } 

hope this helps someone