Testing life cycle-related properties of mobile applications

Více o knize

With the rise of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, their relevance and the variety of applications have expanded significantly. The software quality of mobile applications is closely tied to the application life cycle, which encompasses process-related states and transitions. Modern mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, implement specific scheduling policies at the application level to enhance responsiveness and user experience. However, these policies can restrict resource access based on the application's life cycle state, potentially leading to data loss and erratic behavior. This work introduces a conceptual approach for testing properties related to life cycle state changes, termed life cycle-related properties. The initial phase involves reverse engineering the life cycles of mobile applications, which serve as a foundation for testing these properties during state changes. The testing method leverages callback mechanisms from the mobile platforms to verify assertions about life cycle-related properties, treating application components with their own life cycles as individual units for unit-based testing. A case study demonstrates the implementation of this approach on the Android platform, resulting in the AndroLIFT tool designed for testing life cycle-related properties of Android applications. The evaluation highlights the approach's strengths and limitations, noting its suitability for