Click home icon with Espresso

Question

I am trying to click the home icon in some Espresso tests via:

onView(withId(android.R.id.home)).perform(click());

This works fine for Android > 3.0 - but fails for older versions as appcompat does not seem to use this id for this element then. What is a good approach to do what I want to do?

Solution 1

To not depend on the app locale, you can use the code from Matt Logan by replacing "Navigate up" with R.string.abc_action_bar_up_description:

onView(withContentDescription(R.string.abc_action_bar_up_description)).perform(click());

This helped me a lot because I have an app in more than 5 languages and I had to act like this.

Solution 2

Use the withContentDescription() Matcher:

onView(withContentDescription("Navigate up")).perform(click());

Solution 3

I had trouble navigating back from one Activity to another, but then I found top-level actions:

Espresso.pressBack();

Solution 4

I found a real solution to this issue. By using the hierarchyviewer I found that the toolbar looks like this:

This means we could match the hamburger icon (not back button) like this:

onView(withContentDescription("Open navigation")).perform(click());

But a better solution to me was to find out that the hamburger icon is the only ImageButton and a direct child view of the v7 Toolbar. So I wrote a helper method to match it:

public static Matcher<View> androidHomeMatcher() {
    return allOf(
        withParent(withClassName(is(Toolbar.class.getName()))),
        withClassName(anyOf(
            is(ImageButton.class.getName()),
            is(AppCompatImageButton.class.getName())
    )));
}

@Test
public void clickHamburgerIcon() throws Exception {
    onView(androidHomeMatcher()).perform(click());
    // ...
}

This solution is better because it should match the view no matter which locale you use in your test. :-)

EDIT: Note that Toolbar might be android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar or android.widget.Toolbar - depending on your use case!

EDIT: The support lib version 24.2.0 uses AppCompatImageButton instead of ImageButton, so I added it, too.

EDIT: You have to import the correct methods to get this to work. Here are the imports used:

import static android.support.test.espresso.matcher.ViewMatchers.withClassName;
import static android.support.test.espresso.matcher.ViewMatchers.withParent;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.allOf;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.is;

Solution 5

I was having problems with "Navigate up" in an emulator, this worked for me:

onView(isRoot()).perform(ViewActions.pressMenuKey());

View more solutions

Comments

[Matt Logan]

Wondering if you found an answer to this?

[ligi]

AFAIR not really - I think I worked around this then. Might be worth a try if this changed in the most recent appcompat though

[Matt Logan]

Just found a solution (for me at least). See answer.

[sunlover3]

@ligi Hello! Can you change the accepted answer, please?

[ligi]

@sunlover3 ack - just changed the accepted answer to yours - you are right - this solution is better. Does it work for appcompat and native?

[sunlover3]

@ligi Great! Thank you. It should work, because the OS developers who work on this part should not change these ids. Otherwise, all the tests developed will crash. For the moment, all my tests regarding this part are working.

[nickmartens1980]

This works, however, this may fail on devices that are not set to English

[DesignatedNerd]

If you look for this log in your failures in your language: +------->ImageButton{id=-1, desc=Navigate up,, the desc value will be the translated description in the device's current language. I'd imagine that's buried somewhere within the android.R.string declarations, but I haven't been able to ferret out where it's hidden.

[Matt Logan]

Not sure why the different language thing is a big deal, unless you're running your automated tests on devices set to a different language. Even in this case, you could just switch on the device's default Locale to set the appropriate "Navigate up" translation.

[Ghedeon]

Use with caution, because: 1) apparently in 4.3 content description is "<action bar title>, Navigate up" and matching will fail. 2) You can have more than one view with a such description. In particular, only onView(allOf(withContentDescription(containsString("Navigate up")), isClickable())).perform(click()) works for me.

[bryant1410]

Please notice that back navigation is not the same as up navigation: developer.android.com/design/patterns/navigation.html

[Roc Boronat]

This should be the accepted answer. The accepted one only works on English devices... #fail

[sunlover3]

Thanks. I always think of using general commands, so this is why I searched for the android native string id. Good luck!

[sunlover3]

I would like to help you. Can you tell me how did you receive this error? You must be careful that before calling onView on any view, be sure that nothing overlaps it (like a dialog or some other screen). My code works pretty fine, you have a mistake in your code structure.

[Frikster]

I have the same problem as @AutonomousApps. how can I check to see of anything is overlapping? Shouldn't the withContentDescription bring the view to the top level view that contains the Navigate up button?

[sotrh]

For Kotlin devs, import is using something like import org.hamcrest.Matchers.`is` as _is.

[Felipe Porge Xavier]

The only that worked for my case. I was trying to close a search view.

[Alexei]

I found solution without workaround. Here: val upButton = onView(allOf(instanceOf(ImageButton::class.java), withParent(withId(toolBar))))

[Beloo]

yes, it works, but only with Toolbar widget. For system navigation you should choose another solution

[Brian]

Hello! While this code may solve the question, including an explanation of how and why this solves the problem would really help to improve the quality of your post, and probably result in more up-votes. Remember that you are answering the question for readers in the future, not just the person asking now. Please edit your answer to add explanations and give an indication of what limitations and assumptions apply.

[Clément Jean]

for people using androidx, it's androidx.appcompat.R.string.abc_action_bar_up_description

[Oya Canli]

with navigation component, this is only working in English, when I try in French it fails. @AthaMit's answer works for both languages

[Oya Canli]

Thanks! The accepted anwser only works in English for me since I migrated to Jetpack navigation. This solution worked in French as well.

[sunlover3]

@OyaCanli I'm sure that since 2016 the things might have changed. Thanks for the update!