UI Testing UITableView cell count

Question

I'm trying to verify that a table view has been filled with a certain number of cells in my UI test. Here is my code:

XCUIApplication().tables.element.swipeUp()
let count = XCUIApplication().tables.element.children(matching: .cell).count
XCTAssert(count > 0)

The assert fails because the count is always 0, even though the swipe up scrolls the obviously successfully filled table view. I have also tried:

XCTAssert(app.tables.cells.count > 0)

with the same results. I even created an empty project with a table view with 3 static cells, in just one screen, to remove any other possible distractions for the UI test, and it still always returns 0. I'm testing on iOS 11 with Xcode 9.

Answer 1

Cells don't always register as cells, depending on how you have your accessibility configured. Double check that accessibility is actually seeing cells in Xcode menu -> Open Developer Tool -> Accessibility Inspector.

It's likely what accessibility is seeing is staticTexts instead of cells, depending on your layout code -- in that case, you should assert

XCTAssert(app.tables.staticTexts.count > 0)

If you want cells, configure your cells like so in tableView:cellForItemAtIndexPath:

cell.isAccessibilityElement = true
cell.accessibilityLabel = cell.titleLabel.text // (for example)
cell.accessibilityIdentifier = "MyCellId" // (or whatever you want XCUITest to identify it as)

This will mark the cell as the root accessible item, rather than each of the cell's subviews being discrete elements.