cordova_screenshots plugin

This fastlane plugin enables you to create automated screenshots of your Cordova (or Ionic) project, both for iOS and Android, with fastlane using the normal capture_ios_screenshots and capture_android_screenshots actions or fastlane snapshot (for iOS) or fastlane screengrab (for Android) commands.

This usually is a challenge, as these require you to modify your native projects and add some files. Cordova projects are generated for you and not tracked by version control, so those changes (including the test files your wrote) would get lost frequently.

By keeping your test files in your fastlane folder and offering an action to "retrofit" them to your native projects each time before running the screenshot creation actions, this plugin offers a way around that.

Getting Started

This project is a fastlane plugin. To get started with fastlane-plugin-cordova_screenshots, add it to your project by running:

fastlane add_plugin cordova_screenshots

Actions

• init_cordova_screenshots_ios
• retrofit_cordova_screenshots_ios
• init_cordova_screenshots_android
• retrofit_cordova_screenshots_android

iOS

init_cordova_screenshots_ios

This action creates a sample iOS UI Test file in fastlane/cordova_screenshots/ios. It takes an optional scheme_name parameter, that defines the scheme name that will be used when retrofitting the test file into your Xcode project later.

You can run it either manually with fastlane run init_cordova_screenshots_ios scheme_name:"another_scheme_name" (which will create the folder fastlane/cordova_screenshots/ios/another_scheme_name) or a lane in your Fastfile.

retrofit_cordova_screenshots_ios

After iOS the test files are created, you can edit them and write some tests to take screenshots.

Then you retrofit the tests into your Xcode project using this action: It scans the fastlane/cordova_screenshots/ios folder for sub folders and retrofits each into the Cordova iOS Xcode project by linking them absolutely. (It then creates a UI Test Target and Scheme based on the name of the subfolder. The files are not copied over to the project, so the Xcode project refers to the files in your fastlane folder.)

The action has multiple options:

• team_id is automatically set if it is specified in your fastlane Appfile.
• bundle_id is set automatically if the package_name parameter is set in your fastlane Appfile.
• ios_xcode_path specifies which Xcode project to use. By default it attempts to pick the Xcode project from the platforms/ios folder.
• min_target_ios defines the minimum iOS version

All these parameters can be overridden by specifying them in the call to the action.

This action should be executed each time before you use capture_ios_screenshots action (or command fastlane snapshot on the command line) to create screenshots as it makes sure the test files are linked into the current project.

Android

init_cordova_screenshots_android

Copy over test file to fastlane/cordova_screenshots/android to be edited by the user.

This action creates a sample Android Test file and saves it to fastlane/cordova_screenshots/android. It needs a package_name parameter (for use in the created test file), that is read from your Appfile if set.

You can run it either manually with fastlane run init_cordova_screenshots_android or a lane in your Fastfile.

retrofit_cordova_screenshots_android

After the Android test files are created, you can edit them and write some tests to take screenshots.

Then you retrofit the tests into your Android Studio project using this action.

Note: Right now, this action actually copies (!) the test file from its location into your Android project. A later version of this plugin will also link the Android test files into the project as it does for the iOS tests.

This action should be executed each time before you use capture_android_screenshots action (or command fastlane screengrab on the command line) to create screenshots as it makes sure the test files are present in the current project.

Note that you also have to build the test and debug APK manually before taking screenshots:

gradlew assembleDebug assembleAndroidTest

Or in your screenshot lane:

    gradle(
      task: 'assemble',
      build_type: 'Debug',
      project_dir: 'platforms/android'
    )
    gradle(
      task: 'assemble',
      build_type: 'AndroidTest',
      project_dir: 'platforms/android'
    )

The action has no parameters.

Example

Check out the example Fastfile to see how to use this plugin.

Why it works the way it does

Why do these actions not just copy over a test template to the native project before each run of the screenshots actions? Because then the user couldn't use the Xcode and Android Studio built in test recorders or editors to improve the tests. The tests would be saved only in platforms and overwritten or thrown away with the next platform regeneration. By linking the tests files from the fastlane folder, this can not happen.

Acknowledgement

The iOS part of this plugin is fully based on knocknarea's excellent fastlane-plugin-ionic_integration. I forked and simplified his existing plugin and added the Android implementation.

Run tests for this plugin

To run both the tests, and code style validation, run

rake

To automatically fix many of the styling issues, use

rubocop -a

Issues and Feedback

For any other issues and feedback about this plugin, please submit it to this repository.

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble using plugins, check out the Plugins Troubleshooting guide.

Using fastlane Plugins

For more information about how the fastlane plugin system works, check out the Plugins documentation.

About fastlane

fastlane is the easiest way to automate beta deployments and releases for your iOS and Android apps. To learn more, check out fastlane.tools.