Alexey Alter-Pesotskiy

4 minute read

Counting views in Espresso

While doing pretty and flexible things with Espresso, have you ever faced with AmbiguousViewMatcherException? If so, go on reading, if no, you are lucky guy, just keep the article (:

When does this exception appear? Imagine, you have a RecyclerView with a lot of elements and some of them have the same resource-id as the neighbours have. Do you wanna count the specific element? Do you wanna tap on the first/last specific element? Do you wanna grep the elements by positions? You are more than welcome to stumble on the AmbiguousViewMatcherException!

Let’s try to play around it. I’ll show my vision, how to cover this exception and get a profit. Here we go!

The first way

is to create the object, that will handle the exception and grep a hierarchy of the views. It will give us an opportunity to get:

  • the first matching view;
  • the last matching view;
  • matching view at position;
  • the count of matching views.
object ViewCounter {
    fun first(matcher: Matcher<View>): Matcher<View?>? {
        return object : BaseMatcher<View>() {
            var isFirst = true
            override fun matches(item: Any): Boolean {
                if (isFirst && matcher.matches(item)) {
                    isFirst = false
                    return true
                }
                return false
            }

            override fun describeTo(description: Description) {
                description.appendText("should return first matching item")
            }
        }
    }

    fun last(matcher: Matcher<View>): Matcher<View?>? {
        return getElementFromMatchAtPosition(matcher, getCount(matcher) - 1)
    }

    fun getElementFromMatchAtPosition(matcher: Matcher<View>, position: Int): Matcher<View?>? {
        return object : BaseMatcher<View?>() {
            var counter = 0

            override fun matches(item: Any): Boolean = matcher.matches(item) && counter++ == position

            override fun describeTo(description: Description) {
                description.appendText("Element at hierarchy position $position")
            }
        }
    }

    fun getCount(viewMatcher: Matcher<View>, countLimit: Int = 5): Int {
        var actualViewsCount = 0
        do {
            try {
                Espresso.onView(ViewMatchers.isRoot())
                    .check(ViewAssertions.matches(withViewCount(viewMatcher, actualViewsCount)))
                return actualViewsCount
            } catch (ignored: Error) {
            }
            actualViewsCount++
        } while (actualViewsCount < countLimit)
        throw Exception("Counting $viewMatcher was failed. Count limit exceeded")
    }

    fun withViewCount(viewMatcher: Matcher<View>, expectedCount: Int): Matcher<View?>? {
        return object : TypeSafeMatcher<View?>() {
            var actualCount = -1
            override fun describeTo(description: Description) {
                if (actualCount >= 0) {
                    description.appendText("With expected number of items: $expectedCount")
                    description.appendText("\n With matcher: ")
                    viewMatcher.describeTo(description)
                    description.appendText("\n But got: $actualCount")
                }
            }

            override fun matchesSafely(root: View?): Boolean {
                actualCount = 0
                val iterable = TreeIterables.breadthFirstViewTraversal(root)
                actualCount = Iterables.filter(iterable, withMatcherPredicate(viewMatcher)).count()
                return actualCount == expectedCount
            }
        }
    }

    private fun withMatcherPredicate(matcher: Matcher<View>): Predicate<View?>? {
        return object : Predicate<View?> {
            override fun apply(@Nullable view: View?): Boolean {
                return matcher.matches(view)
            }
        }
    }
}

Comments

I see only one con: it limits us to the views, that we are considering at the moment, and hides from us everything that is outside the screen.

Showcase

@Test
fun sample() {
  val fab = withId(R.id.fab)

  onView(ViewCounter.first(fab)).perform(click())

  onView(ViewCounter.last(fab)).perform(click())

  onView(isRoot()).check(matches(ViewCounter.withViewCount(fab, 3))
}

The second way

is to create two classes:

  1. The first class will match the RecyclerView. It will give us an opportunity to parse the RecyclerView and to get:
  • matching view at position

  • any view at position

      fun withRecyclerView(recyclerViewId: Int): RecyclerViewMatcher {
      return RecyclerViewMatcher(recyclerViewId)
  }

  class RecyclerViewMatcher(val recyclerViewId: Int) {
      fun atPosition(position: Int): Matcher<View> {
          return atPositionOnView(position, -1)
      }

      fun atPositionOnView(position: Int, targetViewId: Int): Matcher<View> {
          return object : TypeSafeMáatcher<View>() {
              var resources: Resources? = null
              var childView: View? = null
              override fun describeTo(description: Description?) {
                  val id = if (targetViewId == -1) recyclerViewId else targetViewId
                  var idDescription = id.toString()
                  if (resources != null) {
                      idDescription = try {
                          resources!!.getResourceName(id)
                      } catch (var4: NotFoundException) {
                          String.format("%s (resource name not found)", id)
                      }
                  }
                  description!!.appendText("with id: $idDescription")
              }

              override fun matchesSafely(view: View?): Boolean {
                  resources = view?.resources
                  if (childView == null) {
                      val recyclerView = view?.rootView?.findViewById(recyclerViewId) as RecyclerView
                      childView = if (recyclerView != null) {
                          recyclerView.findViewHolderForAdapterPosition(position)!!.itemView
                      } else {
                          return false
                      }
                  }
                  return if (targetViewId == -1) {
                      view === childView
                  } else {
                      val targetView: View = childView!!.findViewById(targetViewId)
                      view === targetView
                  }
              }
          }
      }
  }
  1. The second class will handle the AmbiguousViewMatcherException and grep a hierarchy of the whole RecyclerView. Thanks to it we’ll be able to get:
  • the first matching view
  • the last matching view
  • the count of matching views

  • the possibility to consider all the views inside and outside the screen

      fun recyclerViewCounter(@IdRes recyclerViewId: Int, action: RecyclerViewCounter.() -> Unit) {
      action(RecyclerViewCounter(recyclerViewId))
  }

  class RecyclerViewCounter(@IdRes private val recyclerViewId: Int) {
      fun getView(atPosition: Int): Matcher<View> {
          return withRecyclerView(recyclerViewId).atPosition(atPosition)
      }

      fun getCount(expectedView: Matcher<View>): Int {
          val elementsCount = getCount()
          var expectedViewsCount = 0
          repeat(elementsCount) {
              val result = scanPosition(it, expectedView)
              if (result) {
                  expectedViewsCount++
              }
          }
          return expectedViewsCount
      }

      fun getLastMatchingPosition(expectedView: Matcher<View>): Int {
          val elementsCount = getCount()
          var lastMatchingPosition = -1
          repeat(elementsCount) {
              val result = scanPosition(it, expectedView)
              if (result) {
                  lastMatchingPosition = it
              }
          }
          return lastMatchingPosition
      }

      fun getFirstMatchingPosition(expectedView: Matcher<View>): Int? {
          val elementsCount = getCount()
          repeat(elementsCount) {
              val result = scanPosition(it, expectedView)
              if (result) {
                  return it
              }
          }
          return null
      }

      private fun getCount(): Int {
          val count = intArrayOf(0)
          val matcher: Matcher<View> = object : TypeSafeMatcher<View>() {
              override fun matchesSafely(item: View): Boolean {
                  count[0] = (item as RecyclerView).adapter!!.itemCount
                  return true
              }

              override fun describeTo(description: Description) {
                description.appendText("Count of the views inside the RecyclerView")
              }
          }
          onView(CoreMatchers.allOf(ViewMatchers.withId(recyclerViewId), ViewMatchers.isDisplayed()))
              .check(matches(matcher))
          return count.first()
      }

      private fun scanPosition(position: Int, expectedView: Matcher<View>): Boolean {
          try {
              onView(ViewMatchers.withId(recyclerViewId))
                  .perform(RecyclerViewActions.scrollToPosition<RecyclerView.ViewHolder>(position))
              onView(withRecyclerView(recyclerViewId).atPosition(position))
                  .check(matches(hasDescendant(expectedView)))
          } catch (ignored: AssertionError) {
              return false
          }
          return true
      }
  }

Comments

This way is a bit more complicated, but definitely more flexible and reliable. Also, it «almost» doesn’t contradict the Espresso paradigm (:

Showcase

@Test
fun sample() {
  recyclerViewCounter(R.id.recyclerViewId) {
    val fab = withId(R.id.fab)

    val firstFabPosition = getFirstMatchingPosition(fab)
    onView(getView(firstFabPosition)).perform(click())

    val lastFabPosition = getLastMatchingPosition(fab)
    onView(getView(lastFabPosition)).perform(click())

    val actualFabCount = getCount(fab)
    assertEquals(3, actualFabCount)
  }
}

Conclusion

The AmbiguousViewMatcherException and counting views in Espresso are not the problems anymore.

Wish you happy Mondays (:

Updated: