Integrate your Espresso test suite with App Percy

Create new app project on percy dashboard

Sign in to Percy and create a new app type project. After you’ve created the project, you’ll be shown a PERCY_TOKEN environment variable. Percy will use the PERCY_TOKEN to know which organisation and project to upload the screenshots to. You will need this PERCY_TOKEN in next steps.

Set the project token as an environment variable

To set the project token as an environment variable, include the PERCY_TOKEN in the curl command as shown in step 6.

Install Percy packages

Install Percy CLI by running the following command:

Install dependencies

Add the Percy library “io.percy:espresso-java:1.0.3” to your Gradle file:

Update the app manifest file

In order to make calls to the Percy CLI and enable HTTP requests, you need to check if the required permissions and attributes are set in the manifest file. If they are not set, you can add them using the below code:

When using the android:networkSecurityConfig attribute in your network configuration file, there is no need to include usesCleartextTraffic attribute, as it eliminates the cleartext permissions by discarding the cleartext attribute.

In this case you can update the the network config file using the below code:

Update test script

Import the App Percy library to use the methods and attributes required to take screenshots.

In the following code, the percy.screenshot(“name”, “options”) method is called twice. In the first instance we are passing only the required argument which is “name”. In the second instance, we are passing both the required and optional “options”.

We are passing the required arguments.percy.screenshot method.

The screenshot method arguments are:

• name\ (required) - The screenshot name; must be unique to each screenshot
• Additional screenshot options (overrides any project options):
  • setDeviceName(String) - A custom device name assigned to override the device name fetched by the SDK.
  • setStatusBarHeight(Int) - Specifies the height of the status bar in pixels, allowing you to override the value fetched by the SDK if needed.
  • setNavBarHeight(Int) - Specifies the height of the navigation bar in pixels, allowing you to override the value fetched by the SDK if needed.
  • setFullScreen(Boolean) - Indicates whether the app is currently in fullscreen mode.
  • setOrientation(String) - Indicates the current orientation of the app to the SDK, either “portrait” or “landscape”. Note: This is solely for tagging purposes and does not modify the actual device orientation.

Run your test script

Run your tests using either BrowserStack App Automate or your local Android Studio environment.

Run with App Automate

When you run the script on App Automate, proceed to generate the application APK and the test suite APK files. For the App Automate session to work with App Percy, we need to provide App Percy parameters.

For instance, in “appPercy”: {“env”: {“PERCY_BRANCH”: “test”}, “PERCY_TOKEN”: “"}, the env parameter can contain any of the following Percy environment variables.

Execute tests using the following command post updating App Percy params:

Run if using SCM integration

Run in local Android Studio

When you run the test script within a local Android Studio environment, continue modifying the test script by adding the following code snippet, which adds the Percy Server address.

For simulators, use IP 10.0.2.2, for real devices, get an IP address based on the device you are using.

1. Open the terminal and set the Percy token: Export PERCY_TOKEN=.
2. Start your Percy Server by running the following command: percy app:exec start.
3. Run your Espresso tests.
4. Stop your Percy Server by running the following command: percy app:exec stop.