Native End-to-End Testing for Mobile Apps
Article Summary
Joana Melo from Klarna turned a 6-month diversity program into company-wide impact by solving a pain point that had defeated multiple engineering teams before her.
As part of Klarna's Senior Engineering Program for Women, Melo tackled native end-to-end testing for mobile apps. The challenge: replace manual release testing across iOS and Android with automated E2E tests, something previous attempts had failed to deliver.
Key Takeaways
- Built native E2E testing using Webdriver.io, Appium, and Mocha in Klarna's monorepo
- Solved TypeScript globals collision between Jest/jQuery and Mocha/Appium syntax
- Introduced test collocation so features own their tests, enabling team scalability
- Created reusable patterns now applied to migrating existing Cypress tests
Klarna now has working E2E tests in native feature apps with efficient runs, eliminating weekly manual release testing and catching bugs before production.
About This Article
Klarna's monorepo had a TypeScript globals collision where Jest and jQuery definitions conflicted with Mocha and Appium syntax like 'expect' and '$'. This blocked native E2E test implementation across multiple products.
Joana Melo excluded Appium test folders from the global tsconfig and created local tsconfig files for each feature's tests. These local files extended the Appium tooling config. She also established naming conventions using the '__appium__' namespace for test discoverability.
Features can now own their tests through test collocation. This pattern is being applied to migrate Klarna's central Cypress tests and has saved core teams significant implementation time.
