Abstracts Category : Other

Component-based modeling for Android application testing

by Yatian Gao

The rising popularity of Android and the component-based structure of its apps havemotivated the need for automated model-based testing techniques on Android plat-form. Prior researches have primarily focused on the GUI-based model of Androidapps. GUI-based model only includes Activity targeting graphical user interfaces. Itneglects other components such as Service and Broadcast Receiver in the Android Development Framework. Although the GUI-based model testing has achieved a goodtesting result targeting the graphical user interface, its effectiveness has been decreasing as Android applications become more complex in both functional behaviors andcomponent-based structure. This phenomenon challenges the feasibility of currentlyexisting model-based testing on Android platform.To address the challenges mentioned above, we propose a component-based approach of automated model generation for model-based testing on Android platformin this thesis. First, we extend the state definition in the model. Activity, Serviceand Broadcast Receiver are abstracted into the component-based model as states.Newly introduced states can depict the behaviors of a given app in a larger scopefor better descriptive modeling and input generation. Second, we extend transitiondefinition, and also propose a static mapping transition builder for transition construction across different kinds of components. Then the event sequence generator &cluster is proposed to generate proper test sequences for testing. The event clusterassists the input generation of the component-based model testing.Also, we present CamDroid, a tool implementing the proposed approach for An-droid apps testing. Lastly, our experiments have corroborated CamDroid's abilityto build a model connecting components including Service, Activity and BroadcastReceiver. It can overcome the new challenges of Android apps in model-based testing.As a result, component-based model can achieve better performance in real model-based testing in terms of code coverage, comparing to the traditional GUI-basedmodel testing.Advisors/Committee Members: Lin, Xiaodong.