Running multiple Appium Server for parallel execution

In the journey of mobile automation it would eventually happen that you will have substantial scenarios automated. Also the desire to have faster feedback would push the need for running test in parallel.

So how do you run the test in parallel ? One of the approach I would suggest here is to have multiple appium server running. Steps to do it:

• Connect couple of android devices to the system
• Run the below command and note down the device id.

  adb devices

• Run the below command and replace the udid with actual device udid and port with values from (4723)

  appium -U udid -p port

• For second device update the udid and increment the port value by 10

Appium gives a way to do the same via code by giving AppiumServiceBuilder class. Below is a sample code which takes input param as port and udid. In Appium 1.5.3 release they have move the udid to GeneralServerFlag as Robot_Address.

def service = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(new AppiumServiceBuilder() .usingDriverExecutable(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resources/node/bin/node")) .withAppiumJS(new File("/Applications/Appium.app/Contents/Resources/node_modules/appium/bin/appium.js")) .withIPAddress("127.0.0.1") .usingPort(port as int) .withArgument(GeneralServerFlag.ROBOT_ADDRESS, udid as String) .withArgument(AndroidServerFlag.BOOTSTRAP_PORT_NUMBER, ((port as int) + 2) as String) .withArgument(SESSION_OVERRIDE) .withLogFile(new File("build/${device}.log")));

So the above command helps you create the appium service which then you can start as

service.start

The next work would be to create a mapping of tag and the devices on which you want to run the test. This could be done via a properties file.