This document is old, and only of interest for those migrating to Appium 1.x from an earlier version

Migrating your tests from Appium 0.18.x to Appium 1.x

Appium 1.0 has removed a number of deprecated features from the previous versions. This guide will help you know what needs to change in your test suite to take advantage of Appium 1.0.

New client libraries

The biggest thing you need to worry about is using the new Appium client libraries instead of the vanilla WebDriver clients you are currently using. Visit the Appium client list to find the client for your language. Downloads and instructions for integrating into your code are available on the individual client websites.

Ultimately, you'll be doing something like (to use Python as an example):

from appium import webdriver

Instead of:

from selenium import webdriver

New desired capabilities

The following capabilities are no longer used:

• device
• version

Instead, use these capabilities:

• platformName (either "iOS" or "Android")
• platformVersion (the mobile OS version you want)
• deviceName (the kind of device you want, like "iPhone Simulator")
• automationName ("Selendroid" if you want to use Selendroid, otherwise, this can be omitted)

The app capability remains the same, but now refers exclusively to non-browser apps. To use browsers like Safari or Chrome, use the standard browserName cap. This means that app and browserName are exclusive.

We have also standardized on camelCase for Appium server caps. That means caps like app-package or app-wait-activity are now appPackage and appWaitActivity respectively. Of course, since Android app package and activity are now auto-detected, you should be able to omit them entirely in most cases.

New locator strategies

We've removed the following locator strategies:

• name
• tag name

We have now added the accessibility_id strategy to do what name used to do. The specifics will be relative to your Appium client.

tag name has been replaced by class name. So to find an element by its UI type, use the class name locator strategy for your client.

Note about class name and xpath strategies: these now require the fully-qualified class name for your element. This means that if you had an xpath selector that looked like this:

//table/cell/button

It would now need to be:

//UIATableView/UIATableCell/UIAButton

(And likewise for Android: button now needs to be android.widget.Button)

We've also added the following locator strategies:

• -ios uiautomation
• -android uiautomator

Refer to your client for ways to use these new locator strategies.

XML, not JSON

App source methods, which previously returned JSON, now return XML, so if you have code that relies on parsing the app source, it will need to be updated.

Hybrid support through context, not window

Hybrid apps were previously supported by switching between "windows" using

• window_handles
• window
• switch_to.window

Now Appium supports the more conceptually consistent concept of "context". To get all of the available contexts, or the particular context the application is is, you use

# python
driver.contexts
current = driver.context

// javascript
driver.contexts().then(function (contexts) { /*...*/ })

// c#
driver.GetContexts ()
driver.GetContext ()

// java
Set<String> contextNames = driver.getContextHandles();
String context = driver.getContext();

// php
$contexts = $this->contexts();
$context = $this->context();

# ruby
contexts = available_contexts
context = current_context

And to switch between them, you use

# python
driver.switch_to.context("WEBVIEW")

// javascript
driver.currentContext().then(function (context) { /*...*/ })

// c#
driver.SetContext ("WEBVIEW");

java
driver.context(contextName);

// php
$this->context('WEBVIEW');

# ruby
set_context "WEBVIEW"

No more execute_script("mobile: xxx")

All the mobile: methods have been removed, and have been replaced by native methods in the Appium client libraries. This means that a method call like driver.execute("mobile: lock", [5]) will now look something more like driver.lock(5) (where lock has been turned into a native client method). Of course, the details on calling these methods will differ by client.

Of particular note, the gesture methods have been replaced by the new TouchAction / MultiAction API which allows for a much more powerful and general way of putting gestural automation together. Refer to your Appium client for usage notes on TouchAction / MultiAction.

And that's it! Happy migrating!