Leverage the power of open source and don’t reinvent the wheel

During this post, I’ll talk about how I needed a utility and how I cloned and modified a repository to achieve what I needed.

Introduction

One of the things I’m working on at waveapplication is test automation using calabash to ensure the quality of the apps before publishing to the app store. We are working towards a complete Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery and to do so, we need end-to-end functional tests (Apart from Unit and Integration tests) In this specific case, I needed to fake GPS locations on a Android device.

Requirements

Given I’ll be needing this utility to setup the app to a specific state in order to check a specific feature/functionality of the app, I have specific requirements such as the ones below.

• Terminal-based utility
• Lightweight
• Ability to reproduce a route passed to it as a .gpx file.

Research

Before starting to code frenetically, I stopped to do some research on the available methods and technologies available to accomplish given task. I found out that android’s ADB provides developers with a specific command to change the devices location.

geo fix

Given two arguments (Longitude and Latitude) in decimal degrees and optional parameters satelites and altitude it mocks the android device's location to the parameters given. Once I knew the whole project could be done with geo fix I looked for open source repositories that had already implemented this functionality as I was sure of their existence. The first project I found was mockgeofix created by luv this repository that had met all of my requirements except one, It required a app installed on the android device to mock the device's location. This wasn't an option for me but nevertheless I decided to clone the repository and give it a try.

telnet

This will be used to send the geo-fix commands to the android device given a port and an IP.

Adapting mockgeofix to my specific needs

This utility had everything I needed to mock the device’s GPS location. It could even adapt the route to a given speed in km/h. The only thing incompatible with my requirements was the need of an external app for it to work but luckily, there is an alternative for that. These are the steps I followed to adapt the utility to my needs.

Clone the repository and remove the code I don’t need.

Once I had gone through the code, I removed all of the java code (Used for the android application) and only kept the file I was interested in run_sim.py and all the files it depends upon. I also created a requirements.txt file to simplify the process needed to get the code up and running.

Add includes needed for telnet and arguments for telnet security verification

To use Telnet, the program requires you to introduce a security password located in ~/.emulator_console_auth_token. This grants permission to the client to execute methods such as geo fix. This means I had to include the argument option in the code.

Adapt the main thread

This thread connected to the android app and then sent the geo fix commands to it. Now, it simply connects to the phone via telnet and sends the commands directly to it.

def start_geofix(args):    # Start the telnet connection    tn = telnetlib.Telnet(args.ip, args.port)    # Wait until keyword "OK" appears    tn.read_until("OK")    # Perform security verification    # The code is located in ~/.emulator_console_auth_token    tn.write("auth " + args.auth + "\n")    tn.read_until("OK")    while True:        # Send "geo fix" commands forever        tn.write("geo fix %f %f\r\n" % (curr_lon, curr_lat))        time.sleep(UPDATE_INTERVAL)

How to run the code:

Requirements

1. python 2.7
2. virtualenv

Usage

Note: To work, this needs a connected device or a emulated virtual device running

1. git clone [email protected]:SergioRosello/mockgeofix.git
2. In project root directory: source ENV/bin/activate
3. In project root directory: pip install -r requirements.txt
4. In project root directory: python run_sim.py -i targetIP -g path/to/gpx/file.gpx -t emulatorConsoleAuthToken

run_sym.py's parameters

Below is a list of parameters used by run\_sym.py script.

Required parameters

• -i or --ip: The ip address where it will find the device
• -g or --gpx-file: The .gpx file used to trace the route
• -t or --auth: Auth token for telnet authentication

Not required parameters

• -p or -port: The port used to connect. Default value: 5554
• -S or --sleep: Sleep between track points. Default value: 0.5
• -s or --speed: Speed in km/h (Takes precedence over -S)
• -I or --listen-ip: Run a HTTP server visualizing mocked locations on this ip
• -P or --listen-port: HTTP server's port. Default value: 80

Final result

The final state of the project can be seen here. It leverages the power of telnet to communicate with the phone in order to remove the previously necessary application to send the geo fix command. Finally, this code accomplishes every requirement listed previously and I can use it to mock a route during the end-to-end functional tests.

Conclusion

This project has been one of the first real open-source experiences I have had. This is what open source is about. Collaborating with developers worldwide to make things easier to one another. It’s really a beautiful thing to see and be a part of.