Geolocation Testing: What It Is & How to Automate It With Perfecto

Geolocation testing is essential to ensuring your app performs as intended for users wherever they are in the world. In this blog, we will cover what geolocation testing is, provide some examples, and then show you how to perform testing with Appium and Perfecto. 

What Is Geolocation Testing? 

Geolocation testing checks IPs of various geographical locations during the testing of a web or mobile application. Some of the use cases include checking notifications, performance, currencies, and time zones.

There might be a scenario where an application's functionality depends completely on geolocation. Testing location, therefore, becomes important – to ensure that all such scenarios are executed properly.

Geolocation is the process of determining an object's real-world geographic location. This is done by using GPS to create a set of geographic coordinates such as latitude and longitude, which are then utilized to determine location.  

Examples of Geolocation Data 

One of the most common ways users use geolocation is the location-based search query “near me”, such as “coffee near me.” Similarly, if a company wants to know where a web or app user is, it uses geolocation data. 

Sometimes, there are messages that pop up on a website or mobile app. For example, on a banking app, a message might pop up, "Allow My Bank to access this device's location? or in the left-hand corner of a website, "www.google.com wants to know your location" to alert users to geolocation tracking. 

Google Chrome asking for permission to access a user's location. 

Why Is Geolocation Testing Important? 

GPS navigation apps are not the only apps using geolocation. Today, routes, locations, and the estimated time of arrival are implemented into a variety of apps including rideshare, food delivery, e-commerce, games, social media, and more.  

An app may load successfully from one location, but not as expected when the user moves to another location. In addition, an app will present a contextual pop-up message based on the user’s location. As a result, it is critical to run through all the possible test scenarios for every user with geolocation testing.    

How to Perform Geolocation Testing 

Geolocation testing is easy with a commercial, cloud-based test automation platform like Perfecto. Simply access the device you need and simulate your user behavior by entering the location you wish to test.  

By adding IP geolocation into your web and mobile tests, you can validate scenarios like languages, currencies, time zones, and more. These automated tests may be coupled with other testing paradigms like end-to-end regression testing to mimic a complete test environment in a single location.   

Geolocation testing on a Samsung Galaxy in the Perfecto cloud-based lab. Try it now >> 

How to Automate Geolocation Testing

The best way to start with automating geolocation testing is with an open-source tool like Appium. Users can simulate web and mobile app behavior from various locations using Appium's IP geolocation feature, which uses IP addresses from various countries.   

By adding IP geolocation into your tests, you can validate scenarios like languages, currencies, time zones, and more. These automated tests may be coupled with other testing paradigms like end-to-end regression to mimic a complete test environment in a single location.   

Yet, Appium is limited in the test case scenarios that it can handle on its own. When combined with Perfecto, users can take their Appium-based geolocation testing to the next level.

Geolocation Testing Automation With Perfecto & Appium

Automating testing with Perfecto is easier than ever through the integration with Appium. 

To integrate your Appium test code with Perfecto configure your TestNG/Maven projects from within your IDEs (IntelliJ, Eclipse, etc.). Simply provide your private cloud URL, security token, and then define the desired capabilities for the platforms you want to test against.   

Perfecto is also fully integrated with Appium Desktop. This allows you to work on real devices in the Perfecto cloud from the Appium Desktop solution. 

With Perfecto and Appium, organizations can release high-quality web and mobile apps that offer location-specific experiences to users all over the world.   

To get started with Perfecto and Appium for iOS and Android, see a sample project repository. 

Sample project repository available in Perfecto. 

Learn about using tools to secure and optimize processes at scale with Perforce's enterprise automation 101 >>

Bottom Line

Testing like your users is easy with Perfecto, which offers advanced automation capabilities that go beyond your standard open-source testing solutions. In addition to geolocation testing, Perfecto helps teams test what others cannot, such as:

• Biometric authentication

• Two-factor authentication

• Voice assistant testing

• Image injection

• Accessibility testing

• And more!

Combining the power of flexible test authoring, cross-platform execution, and intelligent analytics into one quality platform, Perfecto helps your teams — developers, business testers, SDETs, and managers — test more, test faster, and deliver exceptional experiences. 

Are you ready for a more user-friendly and efficient functional testing system?  Try Perfecto for free today with our 14-day trial.

Try Geolocation Testing