Appium vs Espresso for automated testing framework

Question

For last few weeks, I was using Appium(python) for android testing but yesterday we have decided to shift to Expresso(Java) for automated testing. There are couple of reasons why we are making this shift:

• We want to scale out our automated testing, and there are lot of features not present in appium.

• This is one of the latest testing framework for android, and has nice backward compatibility.

• Small API and very easy to customize.

I have been reading for Espresso but I don't find anything great at all, If I compare it with Appium. I am a Python/R developer so maybe there are couple of points I am not able to understand. Would anyone like to help me understand if the shift to this new testing framework will be good for future? I am missing the bigger picture here, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

1. The Shifting will be very much useful as Espresso supports testing activities outside the app like camera, browser and dialer etc which appium does not support.
2. Espresso you can test toast message, auto complete and dialogs which are outside app.
3. With Espresso Test Suit you can find code coverage and measure your testing efforts.

Answer 2

You can go to Espresso if you're sticking only to Android automation and have no idea of automating iOS.

AFIKW, Espresso needs source code of the app in order to automate it.

Advantage is, it's directly open-sourced by google.

But my go is to go with Appium since its a large open sourced community with huge enhancements on its way and easy to automate with any programming language and needless to say it supports both Android and iOS.