atomacos: Automated Testing on macOS

This library is a fork of atomac. It was created to provide a release with python 3 support because there has not been a release since 2013

Atomacos is a library to enable GUI testing of macOS applications via the Apple Accessibility API. Atomacos has direct access to the API via pyobjc. It's fast and easy to use to write tests.

Getting started

Requirements

• macOS
• pyobjc
• Systemwide Accesibility enabled

On travis, it's only on 10.11 because we are able to enable accessibility API.

If you experience issues, please open a ticket in the issue tracker.

Enabling Systemwide Accessibility

Check the checkbox:

System Preferences > Universal Access > Enable access for assistive devices
System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility

Failure to enable this will result in AXErrorAPIDisabled exceptions during some module usage.

Installing

For release

$ pip install atomacos

For pre-release

$ pip install --pre atomacos

Usage Examples

Once installed, you should be able to use it to launch an application:

>>> import atomacos
>>> atomacos.launchAppByBundleId('com.apple.Automator')

This should launch Automator.

Next, get a reference to the UI Element for the application itself:

>>> automator = atomacos.getAppRefByBundleId('com.apple.Automator')
>>> automator
<atomacos.AXClasses.NativeUIElement AXApplication Automator>

Now, we can find objects in the accessibility hierarchy:

>>> window = automator.windows()[0]
>>> window.AXTitle
u'Untitled'
>>> sheet = window.sheets()[0]

Note that we retrieved an accessibility attribute from the Window object - AXTitle. Atomacos supports reading and writing of most attributes. Xcode's included Accessibility Inspector can provide a quick way to find these attributes.

There is a shortcut for getting the sheet object which bypasses accessing it through the Window object. Atomacos can search all objects in the hierarchy:

>>> sheet = automator.sheetsR()[0]

There are search methods for most types of accessibility objects. Each search method, such as windows, has a corresponding recursive search function, such as windowsR.

The recursive search finds items that aren't just direct children, but children of children. These search methods can be given terms to identify specific elements. Note that * and ? can be used as wildcard match characters in all search methods:

>>> close = sheet.buttons('Close')[0]

There are methods to search for UI Elements that match any number of criteria. The criteria are accessibility attributes:

>>> close = sheet.findFirst(AXRole='AXButton', AXTitle='Close')

findFirst and findFirstR return the first item found to match the criteria or None. findAll and findAllR return a list of all items that match the criteria or an empty list([]).

Objects are fairly versatile. You can get a list of supported attributes and actions on an object:

>>> close.getAttributes()
[u'AXRole', u'AXRoleDescription', u'AXHelp', u'AXEnabled', u'AXFocused',
u'AXParent', u'AXWindow', u'AXTopLevelUIElement', u'AXPosition', u'AXSize',
u'AXTitle']
>>> close.AXTitle
u'Close'
>>> close.getActions()
[u'Press']

Performing an action is as natural as:

>>> close.Press()

Any action can be triggered this way.

Links

• License
• Issues
• Source Code
• Changes
  • Commits page has all changes to the project.
  • Release page will also outline changes
• Thanks ATOMac and PyObjC