Network Security Config in androidTest gets ignored

Question

My app has free and paid flavours. Right now we are adding tests the to paid flavour that run in a mock server, we need to communicate with it in cleartext so are trying to add a network security config only in androidTestPaid (we don't have one in the main source root). Unfortunately the config seems to be completely ignored.

androidTestPaid/AndroidManifest.xml

<manifest ...>
    <application
        tools:node="merge"
        android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config"
        android:usesCleartextTraffic="true"
        ... />
    </application>
    <instrumentation android:name="...CustomTestRunner" ... />
</manifest>

androidTestPaid/res/xml/network_security_config.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<network-security-config>
    <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true">
        <domain includeSubdomains="true">127.0.0.1</domain>
    </domain-config>
</network-security-config>

In our gradle files we do not do anything with source sets for flavour-specific android test, but we do for the base android test. Could that lead to problems?

build.gradle

android {
    sourceSets {
         androidTest {
            java.srcDirs = ['src/androidTest/java', 'src/testShared/java']
            testOptions {
                animationsDisabled = true
            }
         }
         ... 
     }
     ...
}

What would stop this configuration from being picked up in our tests?

Upkeep

Answer 1

Directory androidTest belongs to to the test-app, which means it will end up in the wrong package. Adding them eg. to the debug source-set would cause them to end up in the actual app package under test.

One can define which build-type to build for testing in the AndroidManifest.xml.
The documentation suggests build-type staging; it should be debuggable true.

android.defaultConfig.testBuildType "debug"

And this would be the resulting paths, where network_security_config.xml would be picked up:

debug/res/xml/network_security_config.xml
debugFree/res/xml/network_security_config.xml
debugPaid/res/xml/network_security_config.xml

---

While one cannot use the local loopback 127.0.0.1, because the emulator has it's own sub-net. I can only hint for, that this is quite pointless, while I'm sure this had already been answered before.

Always

AndroidManifest and extra XMLs being ignored when merging manifests is what got me. Placing it inside debug as you suggested works, although non-intuitive IMO. – Murder

127.0.0.1 can't be used as loopback indeed. The correct one would be 10.0.0.2 as described in developer.android.com/studio/run/emulator-networking – Murder

@Murder You could as well define source-set testing, which inherits from debug. It's just important that it's debuggable true and is not being called test, which causes it to be be packaged into the test-app. This all is quite flexible and even scriptable. – Always