Starting with uiautomator

Uiautomator:

Uiautomator was introduced along with the release of Android Jelly Bean 4.2.
Its a perfect tool to start off with your UI Testing on Android Devices.
Its a clear indication of support provided by Google to help the testers struggling with their changing frameworks.

Prerequisites to test:

• Have your Android SDK version upgraded to revision 21.
• If you do not have the Android SDK installed in your system. Here is the link to get going: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
• Your test device must have an Android API version 16 or more. 
• You can the device's Android API version through the following command:  

adb shell getprop ro.build.version.release

Starting with the tests:

• Open Eclipse downloaded from the above link and create a new Java project
• Import the android.jar and uiautomator.jar  into your project from the following path : <adt-bundle>/sdk/platforms/<android-17/18>/
• You can import the jars in you project by:
• Right-click Project -> Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries ->Add External JAR's

Code Snippet:

package com.uiautomator.tests;

import com.android.uiautomator.core.UiObject;
import com.android.uiautomator.core.UiObjectNotFoundException;
import com.android.uiautomator.core.UiSelector;
import com.android.uiautomator.testrunner.UiAutomatorTestCase;

public class FirstTest extends UiAutomatorTestCase{
 
 public void testFirst() throws UiObjectNotFoundException {
                getUiDevice().pressHome();
  UiObject obj = new UiObject(new UiSelector().text("ButtonText"));
  obj.clickAndWaitForNewWindow();
 }
}

Execution of tests:

The execution of the tests is an easy four step process:

Step 1:
Create the configuration file to build the jar file:

<android-sdk>/tools/android create uitest-project -n <name> -t 1 -p <path>

The is the name of the project that contains your uiautomator test source files, and the is the path to the corresponding project directory.

Step 2:
Create the JAR file. Go to the project directory where your build.xml is located. Then execute:

ant build

Step3:
Push the jar file to the device:

adb push ~/dev/workspace/Settings/bin/LaunchSettings.jar /data/local/tmp/

Step4:
Trigger the tests on the device after pushing the jar file to device:

adb shell uiautomator runtest LaunchSettings.jar -c com.my.LaunchSettings