Android Monkey Tool Review

1. The Monkey Tool
Goofing around with Android

2. A UI/Application Exerciser
● The Monkey is a command-line tool that
that you can run on any Android emulator
instance or on a device.
● It sends a pseudo-random stream of user
events into the system, which acts as a
stress test on the application software you
are developing.

3. History and Availability
● The Monkey is a built-in Android UI testing
tool, and can be accessed through use of
the adb (android debugging bridge) supplied
to android developers for free by Google.

4. Other UI/App Testing Tools
● There aren’t any other popular Android UI automated
testing tools -- the Monkey tool is meant to be used as
a stress-test, while other tools use specific test cases.
● Although ‘monkeyrunner’ is similar to the monkey tool
in some ways,
Google states
that they are
unrelated.

5. Sustainability and Performance
● Since the Monkey is included as part of the
Android SDK, it is kept up-to-date by Google
and has excellent reliability.
● However, testing on an external device,
rather than a virtual one, leads to much
faster results and less headache. Running
the tool on a virtual device can take a lot of
processing power.

6. Benefit / Cost
● The tool is packaged with the Android SDK,
so it is free to use. This also means that it is
compatible with any existing Android
project.
● In order to use the monkey, just navigate to
the android-sdk folder in your shell, and run
the monkey tool on any connected device.
Anyone with the sdk can do this.

7. Running the Tool
● The monkey has no GUI interface
● So it must be run from a shell.

8. Running the Tool
● In order to run the monkey, you must have
an android device (virtual or otherwise)
connected to adb.
● You can only have one device running at a
time.

9. Running the Tool
● After starting up, the monkey begins
sending user interface events to the device;
this is viewable in real time.

10. Running the Tool
● Since the tool is random (pseudo-random),
and you can control the amount of tests,
the app can end up in odd situations.

11. Testing On Your Own
● In order to use the monkey tool, navigate to
your android-sdk folder, and from there to
platform-tools.
● From here, you can run the adb tool. ADB
comes with a ‘shell’ option, which allows
you to access the android device directly.

12. Testing On Your Own
● However, you can simply execute the tool
through the adb shell, without actually
going through the device files.
○ The ‘-p’ option allows you to choose a specific
package for the tool to browse.
○ The ‘-v’ option is for setting something called
‘verbosity’ every -v added increases level of detail
○ The number (1000) at the end of the command is

13. Thoughts
● The Monkey tool is fairly simple to use, and is a great
for apps that have a significant amount of user input
involved.
● For many apps, which only receive user input for
buttons, or small text boxes, then the uses for this tool
are limited.
● But if your app requires constant input (like drawing
apps), or simultaneous inputs (like a game), then it
could be very beneficial.