Testing Location based Apps on Android Emulator

Things have changed for the good with Emulator 2.0. I think this is the first time I might end up spending more development time on the emulator than on the device.

In this post, I'll be explaining two approaches of how to effectively test location-based apps using the emulator:

1. Testing a single location for the app

From the Extended Controls > Location you can send specific Latitude, Longitude & Altitude to the device. Here's a GIF which shows how we can send Latitude and Longitude and that gets detected by the application

2. Testing multiple locations using KML

For the demo I'm using a KML file from here: https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/kml_tut#paths which specifies multiple locations in the Placemark section (To learn more about KML, here's a tutorial: https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/kml_tut)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
  <Document>
    <name>Paths</name>
    <description>Examples of paths. Note that the tessellate tag is by default
      set to 0. If you want to create tessellated lines, they must be authored
      (or edited) directly in KML.</description>
    <Style id="yellowLineGreenPoly">
      <LineStyle>
        <color>7f00ffff</color>
        <width>4</width>
      </LineStyle>
      <PolyStyle>
        <color>7f00ff00</color>
      </PolyStyle>
    </Style>
    <Placemark>
      <name>Absolute Extruded</name>
      <description>Transparent green wall with yellow outlines</description>
      <styleUrl>#yellowLineGreenPoly</styleUrl>
      <LineString>
        <extrude>1</extrude>
        <tessellate>1</tessellate>
        <altitudeMode>absolute</altitudeMode>
        <coordinates> -112.2550785337791,36.07954952145647,2357
          -112.2549277039738,36.08117083492122,2357
          -112.2552505069063,36.08260761307279,2357
          -112.2564540158376,36.08395660588506,2357
          -112.2580238976449,36.08511401044813,2357
          -112.2595218489022,36.08584355239394,2357
          -112.2608216347552,36.08612634548589,2357 
          -112.2633204928495,36.08621519860091,2357
          -112.2644963846444,36.08627897945274,2357
          -112.2656969554589,36.08649599090644,2357 
        </coordinates>
      </LineString>
    </Placemark>
  </Document>
</kml>

Steps

• Select and Load KML file: From the Extended Controls > Location click on Load GPX/XML 
• The above step would load locations from KML file in the table 
• Select the speed at which you want to change the location, for example, Speed 2x would change location every 2 seconds

Here's the pictorial representation of the above steps :

Here's a GIF image showing how it iterates through locations in the table and updates the Latitude & Longitude on the emulator