Can the UI Automation instrument be run from the command line?

Question

Is there a way to open the UIAutomation instrument through the terminal?

Will it be possible to write an AppleScript to open Apple's UIAutomation tool and load the application to be tested?

Can you please tell me is there any way through scripting or through the command line we can open UIAutomation and select the app to be tested, as well as select the test script?

Answer 1

instruments -t /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Instruments/\
PlugIns/AutomationInstrument.bundle/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate \
<full_path_to_application> -e UIASCRIPT <path_to_script.js> \
-e UIARESULTSPATH <output_results_path>

for xcode >= 4.5

instruments -t
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Instruments.app/Contents/PlugIns/\
AutomationInstrument.bundle/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate \
<full_path_to_application> -e UIASCRIPT <path_to_script.js> \
-e UIARESULTSPATH <output_results_path>

for xcode >= 6.1

instruments -w <device ID> -t \
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Instruments.app/Contents/PlugIns/\
AutomationInstrument.xrplugin/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate \
<full_path_to_application> -e UIASCRIPT <path_to_script.js> \
-e UIARESULTSPATH <output_results_path>

There a few important things to note though:

1. the -w parameter is not required unless you want to run the scripts on your device. If you want to run your scripts on the simulator, simply omit this parameter from the command.

2. full_path_to_application is the path to your .app file that is created by your simulator. For me, the path was

   /Users/fwasim/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.0/Applications/AA6BA2E1-D505-4864-BECC-29ADEE28194D/name_of_application.app

   this path might be different for anyone else depending on what iOS version are you running on your simulator. Also remember to put this path in double quotation marks.

3. The path_to_script.js should be the FULL PATH to where your automation script written in javascript is saved. Also remember to put this path in double quotation marks.

4. Lastly output results path is the path where you want to save the output results. Also remember to put this path in double quotation marks.

These were the points I had been missing on and thus was getting some of the errors mentioned above.

Answer 2

Starting UIAutomation via command line You can do it now, starting with XCode 4.2 for iOS5 beta 4 From command line, you can run instruments pointing to the automation template and specify as environment variables the test script you want to execute and destination path for results:

instruments -w -t /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Instruments/PlugIns/AutomationInstrument.bundle/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate -e UIASCRIPT

Above is from this source url: http://dev-ios.blogspot.com/2011/07/starting-uiautomation-via-command-line.html

See some more details on command line from Apple at: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/instruments.1.html

Plus post from Stacktrace user on command line run with iphone iOS UIAutomation Can Instruments be used using the command line?

Hope this helps- have a good day :)

Answer 3

Updated and tested for Xcode 6.0.1:

instruments -w 'iPhone 5s' \
    -t '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Instruments.app/Contents/PlugIns/AutomationInstrument.xrplugin/Contents/Resources/Automation.tracetemplate' \
    '/Users/sohail/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/7232A640-A9D2-4626-A2AD-37AFFF706718/data/Containers/Bundle/Application/E71B915E-051D-4BEF-9083-34416D02EC91/RoadRunnerRadar.app' \
    -e UIASCRIPT '/Users/sohail/Developer/clients/acme/roadrunnerradar/ACMERoadRunnerRadarAutomationTests/TestRunner.js' \
    -e UIARESULTSPATH '/Users/sohail/Developer/clients/acme/roadrunnerradar/ACMERoadRunnerRadarAutomationTests/TestResults/'

Inspired by others who wrote command-line wrappers that haven't been updated in a while, and thus didn't work (and seemed difficult to make sense of as I was tempted to resurrect them), I wrote a bash shell script that I believe will be more transparent, lighter and thus, easier to maintain.

You can find the project on github and a companion blog post.