Android Monkey Testing

One of the fun things about programming for the Android platform is the monkey testing tool they provide.

It is a tool that simply simulates the use of you app as if one of those proverbial Shakespearian monkeys is using it. That is it just random presses the screen and other buttons. It does stuff you just don't expect anyone to do.

This has found no end of bugs in my UI code. In part because I am learning the API and for a while had not appreciated that certain things should be done on the UI thread of the app.

I use the monkey testing tool before reach release/update for all the apps I make. I usually set it to about 25000 events on each run and run it a number of times using different starting locations and seeds.

A great tool and one every android developer should use.