MobiCoMonkey (beta)

(Previously known as mobile-monkey, we are still updating the readme file!) MobiCoMonkey is a GUI based light-weight Android Mobile app Contextual Monkey type stress testing tool. It not only stress tests your application based on GUI events, but also contexts, such as

• Network Delay,
• Network Type,
• Network Speed,
• Key events (Alphanumeric, Volume, etc)
• Screen Orientation

How it works

The steps of using Mobile-Monkey is fairly simple. Similar to the Monkey Stress Testing tool from Google, it requires only Android Application (APK) to function. In simple terms, the following takes place when you provide it an APK, along with a few parameters:

• It analyzes the permissions requested to guess the required contexts in the app.
• It then creates a set of contextual events at random intervals. You can also set the nature of the pseudo-random intervals by setting values in the configFile. A seed is used to control the pseudo random nature of the events generation.
• The system is flexible enough to feed a custom set of contextual events, but that part is not completely implemnented yet.
• It then loads up the emulator specified in the configFile and installs the app
• Using a combination of Android API and low level telnet connection, it sends those contextual events to the Emulator.

Setup / Requirements / Dependencies

MobiCoMonkey was created and and tested in Linux Mint 18.3 and Ubuntu 16.04, 64 bit. It is dependent on:

• Android SDK
• Python 3.6

The pip requirements are kept in requirements.txt file. The installation steps are:

• Download/clone this repo
• activate a virtual environment consisting of python3.6
• execute pip install -r requirements.txt
• pip might throw errors, but those will probably be related to you getting offered a better version of pip dependencies. Please use google.com to solve those.
• Check and modify the configFile as provided in the Config File Options section.

Config File Options

Mobile Monkey is dependent on configFile. It is also configurable using the same file. The following options are available:

Dependencies

Key	Meaning
root	the root directory
directory	directory where apk files of apps are kept
adb	path of adb from Android SDK
aapt	path of aapt from Android SDK
emulator	path of emulator from Android SDK
android	path of android from Android SDK
tools	path of tools from Android SDK
current_directory	path of the current directory of mobile-manager
temp	path of the temporary directory, where the apk files are extracted and analyzed
telnet_key	value of the telnet key. Generally found in a file called .emulator_console_auth_token from your home directory. Automatically created by Android SDK
localhost	is required for telnet
apktool	tool required for testing unsigned apks or 3rd party apks. can be collected from here.

Configurations

Mobile-Monkey is configurable in various ways using the configFile. All duration keys specified below are in seconds unless otherwise specified.

Key	Value
minimum_interval	minimum interval between contextual events
maximum_interval	maximum interval between contextual events. Must be greater than minimum_interval and less than duration
monkey_interval	Mobile-Monkey can utilize the monkey tool from Google internally. monkey_interval is the interval between each events from monkey in millilseconds
headless	Determines whether the emulator will run in headless mode or not, only accepts True/False
seed	seed is used to control the Pseudo-randomness of interval_events. integers only
duration	the complete duration of contextual stress testing
apk_name	name of the apk file without the apk extension
apk_full_path	the full path is automatically deduced by combining the root and apk_name. You need to provide the rest of the path
emulator_name	Case Sensitive name of the emulator to be used. Must be created before using.
emulator_port	mobile_monkey will try to start the emulator using this port. 5555 is the default, however it may sometimes change due to unavailability of the port. Mobile-Monkey can handle that.
log_address	path where logs will be kept
dump_address	path where uiautomator dumps will be kept

Others

The following key values are created for debugging purposes.

• log_file
• sample_log
• monkey_log_file
• mobile_monkey_log_file
• mobile_monkey_log

These will be removed at later stages in the stable release.

Running Mobile-Monkey

We are assuming that you have setup the configFile properly and have your APK prepared. At all times,we are also assuming that you are in a python3.6 virtual environment. Now, from the mobile-monkey directory:

• python install_app.py will start the emulator and install the app

• you now have two options. you can either run monkey from Google through mobile-monkey, or you can run mobile-monkey. To run mobile-monkey, type:

  python mobile_monkey.py

  after successful execution, mobile-monkey will create a log file of execution in apkname_YYYYMMDDHHMM_MobileMonkey.log format.

  to run monkey, type:

  python run_monkey_only.py

  after successful execution, mobile-monkey will create a log file of execution in apkname_YYYYMMDDHHMM_Monkey.log format.

• in both cases, mobile_monkey will stop contextual events execution in case a fatality or error occurs during execution.

• It will also display in terminal what contextual event it is executing. A different option will be provided later that will help it store the contextual events sequence for checking.

• Finally, it will show you a list containing number of errors, warnings, unique errors, and unique warnings the app created during execution.

Please note that we have tried our best to clean up the warnings and errors related to advertisement, but everyone uses different formats of advertisement integration. Therefore, it is highly advised to remove your advertisement integration before testing the app.