How to access back bar button item in universal way under UITests in Xcode?

Question

The problem is when I try to access back bar button item because it is presented with:

• Restaurants title,
• Back title
• without title

Like it is on the screens:

Currently I access it like this:

let backButton = XCUIApplication().buttons["Restaurants"]

but it won't work for other cases. It is not universal way. May I somehow set it accessibilityIdentifier or something else?

Posterity

Setting the accessibility identifier is the most robust way as it will give you independence from the label text. – Avera

Answer 1

Generally the back button tends to be the first button element in the navigation bar

app.navigationBars.buttons.element(boundBy: 0).tap()

Keirakeiser

You can also add an accessibilityIdentifier to the back button when you're creating it (e.g., backButton.accessibilityIdentifier = "back") and then you just do app.buttons["back"].tap(). – Imide

what if there is no back button and another button will be tapped? doesn't work well... need to assign identifier – Prudence

Answer 2

Based on Aaron Sofaers comment, you can also set the accessibilityIdentifier directly in Interface Builder.

Rachealrachel

Can you do this for the backBarButtonItem though? – Ardath

You should be able to do so, when you create it in a storyboard/xib. – Rachealrachel

Ah, but not programmatically? – Ardath

I don't think, you can access a programmatically created button in the Interface Builder?! – Rachealrachel

I mean, if I create the button programmatically and set the accessibilityIdentifier programmatically. I tried that and it didn't work. – Ardath

What did you do exactly? It should work, as Aaron Sofaer described it in his comment above. – Rachealrachel

This doesn't seem to work aqt least as of iOS 11 / Xcode 9. Asserting button.exists fails. – Rummer

Answer 3

Here's how you can do it in Swift 3:

app.navigationBars.buttons.element(boundBy: 0).tap()

Trapezium

What is the difference between this answer and the accepted one which was posted almost a year earlier? – Cherlycherlyn

Answer 4

Objective-C:

[[app.navigationBars.buttons elementBoundByIndex:0] tap];

Edmondson

Not the best solution because order of the buttons can be changed, and test case will fail. It's better to access the element using accessibilityIdentifier – Dodecasyllable