Fastbot2: Reusable Automated Model-based GUI Testing for Android Enhanced by Reinforcement LearningVirtual
In the industrial setting, mobile apps undergo frequent updates to catch up with the changing real-world requirements. It leads to the strong practical demands of continuous testing, i.e., obtaining quick feedback on app quality during development. However, existing automated GUI testing techniques fall short in this scenario as they simply run an app version from scratch and do not reuse the knowledge from previous testing runs to accelerate the testing cycle. To fill this important gap, we introduce a reusable automated model-based GUI testing technique. Our key insight is that the knowledge of event-activity transitions from the previous testing runs, i.e., executing which events can reach which activities, is valuable for guiding the follow-up testing runs to quickly cover major app functionalities. To this end, we propose (1) a probabilistic model to memorize and leverage this knowledge during testing, and (2) design a model-based guided testing strategy (enhanced by a reinforcement learning algorithm), to achieve faster-and-higher coverage testing. We implemented our technique as an automated testing tool named Fastbot2. Our evaluation on the two popular industrial apps (with billions of user installations) from ByteDance, Douyin and Toutiao, shows that Fastbot2 outperforms the state-of-the-art testing tools (Monkey, APE and Stoat) in both activity coverage and fault detection in the context of continuous testing. To date, Fastbot2 has been deployed in the CI pipeline at ByteDance for nearly two years, and 50.8% of the developer-fixed crash bugs were reported by Fastbot2, which significantly improves app quality. Fastbot2 has been made publicly available to benefit the community at: https://github.com/bytedance/Fastbot_Android. To date, it has received 500+ stars on GitHub and been used by many app vendors and individual developers to test their apps.
Tue 11 OctDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
10:30 - 12:30 | Technical Session 4 - Mobile Apps IResearch Papers / NIER Track / Industry Showcase / Journal-first Papers / Tool Demonstrations at Gold A Chair(s): Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg | ||
10:30 20mResearch paper | Mining Android API Usage to Generate Unit Test Cases for Pinpointing Compatibility Issues Research Papers Xiaoyu Sun Monash University, Xiao Chen Monash University, Yanjie Zhao Monash University, Pei Liu Monash University, John Grundy Monash University, Li Li Monash University DOI Pre-print | ||
10:50 20mPaper | Automated, Cost-effective, and Update-driven App TestingVirtual Journal-first Papers Chanh-Duc Ngo University of Luxembourg, Fabrizio Pastore University of Luxembourg, Lionel Briand University of Luxembourg; University of Ottawa Link to publication | ||
11:10 20mIndustry talk | Fastbot2: Reusable Automated Model-based GUI Testing for Android Enhanced by Reinforcement LearningVirtual Industry Showcase Zhengwei Lv ByteDance, Chao Peng ByteDance, China, Zhao Zhang Bytedance Network Technology, Ting Su East China Normal University, Kai Liu Bytedance, Ping Yang Bytedance Network Technology | ||
11:30 10mVision and Emerging Results | Right to Know, Right to Refuse: Towards UI Perception-Based Automated Fine-Grained Permission Controls for Android AppsVirtual NIER Track Vikas K. Malviya Singapore Management University, Chee Wei Leow Singapore Management University, Ashok Kasthuri Singapore Management University, Yan Naing Tun Singapore Management University, Lwin Khin Shar Singapore Management University, Lingxiao Jiang Singapore Management University Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:40 20mResearch paper | MalWhiteout: Reducing Label Errors in Android Malware DetectionVirtual Research Papers Liu Wang Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Haoyu Wang Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, Xiapu Luo Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yulei Sui University of Technology Sydney | ||
12:00 10mDemonstration | AUSERA: Automated Security Vulnerability Detection for Android AppsVirtual Tool Demonstrations Sen Chen Tianjin University, Yuxin Zhang Tianjin University, Lingling Fan Nankai University, Jiaming Li Tianjin University, Yang Liu Nanyang Technological University | ||
12:10 20mResearch paper | A Comprehensive Evaluation of Android ICC Resolution TechniquesVirtual Research Papers Jiwei Yan Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Shixin Zhang Beijing Jiaotong University, China, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology, Xi Deng Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jun Yan Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Jian Zhang Institute of Software at Chinese Academy of Sciences, China DOI Pre-print |