Xcode 7 ui automation - loop through a tableview/collectionview - xcode

Question

I am using xCode 7.1. I would like to automate interaction with all cells from a table/collection view. I would expect it to be something like this:
for i in 0..<tableView.cells.count {
let cell = collectionView.cells.elementBoundByIndex(i)
cell.tap()
backBtn.tap()
}
However this snippet only queries current descendants of the table view, so it will loop through the first m (m < n) loaded cells out of total n cells from the data source.
What is the best way to loop through all cells available in data source? Obviously querying for .Cell descendants is not the right approach.
P.S.: I tried to perform swipe on table view after every tap on cell. However it swipes to far away (scrollByOffset is not available). And again, don't know how to extract total number of cells from data source.
Cheers,
Leonid

Answer 1

So problem here is that you cannot call tap() on a cell that is not visible. SoI wrote a extension on XCUIElement - XCUIElement+UITableViewCell
func makeCellVisibleInWindow(window: XCUIElement, inTableView tableView: XCUIElement) {
var windowMaxY: CGFloat = CGRectGetMaxY(window.frame)
while 1 {
if self.frame.origin.y < 0 {
tableView.swipeDown()
}
else {
if self.frame.origin.y > windowMaxY {
tableView.swipeUp()
}
else {
break
}
}
}
}
Now you can use this method to make you cell visible and than tap on it.
var window: XCUIElement = application.windows.elementBoundByIndex(0)
for i in 0..<tableView.cells.count {
let cell = collectionView.cells.elementBoundByIndex(i)
cell.makeCellVisibleInWindow(window, inTableView: tableView)
cell.tap()
backBtn.tap()
}

Answer 2

let cells = XCUIApplication().tables.cells
for cell in cells.allElementsBoundByIndex {
cell.tap()
cell.backButton.tap()
}

Answer 3

I face the same situation however from my trials, you can do tap() on a cell that is not visible.
However it is not reliable and it fails for an obscur reason.
It looks to me that this is because in some situation the next cell I wanted to scroll to while parsing my table was not loaded.
So here is the trick I used:
before parsing my tables I first tap in the last cell, in my case I type an editable UITextField as all other tap will cause triggering a segue.
This first tap() cause the scroll to the last cell and so the loads of data.
then I check my cells contents
let cells = app.tables.cells
/*
this is a trick,
enter in editing for last cell of the table view so that all the cells are loaded once
avoid the next trick to fail sometime because it can't find a textField
*/
app.tables.children(matching: .cell).element(boundBy: cells.count - 1).children(matching: .textField).element(boundBy: 0).tap()
app.typeText("\r") // exit editing
for cellIdx in 0..<cells.count {
/*
this is a trick
cell may be partially or not visible, so data not loaded in table view.
Taping in it is will make it visible and so do load the data (as well as doing a scroll to the cell)
Here taping in the editable text (the name) as taping elsewhere will cause a segue to the detail view
this is why we just tap return to canel name edidting
*/
app.tables.children(matching: .cell).element(boundBy: cellIdx).children(matching: .textField).element(boundBy: 0).tap()
app.typeText("\r")
// doing my checks
}
At least so far it worked for me, not sure this is 100% working, for instance on very long list.