Introduction to Appium

Appium is an open source, cross-platform test automation tool for native, hybrid and mobile web apps and testing will happen on Simulators,emulators (Android) and on real devices such as  iOS, Android, Firefox OS.

Supported Platforms:

1. IOS
2. Android
3. Firefox OS

Appium Advantages:

1. Testers can work on any framework.
2. Able to prepare tests with any development tools.
3. Inbuilt of standard Automation APIS for all platforms ,there is no need to recompile the apps

In APPIUM is designed with vendor provided framework for support for different platforms those are supported below platforms.

1. IOS :Apple's UI Automator
2. Android 4.2+:Google's UI Automator
3. Android 2.3+:Google's Instrumentation

Requirements to set up Appium 

iOS Platform:

1. Mac OS X 10.7 or higher, 10.9.2
2. XCode greater than or equals to 4.6.3, 5.1.1
3. Apple Developer Tools like iPhone simulator SDK, command line tools

Android Platform:

1. Android SDK API greater than or equals to 17 Version
2. Appium supports Android on OS X, Linux and Windows.

linux

osx

windows

Firefox OS Platform:

1. Firefox OS Simulator