appium-android-driver

What is appium-android-driver?

The appium-android-driver npm package is a driver for Appium that allows you to automate Android applications. It provides a set of tools and APIs to interact with Android devices and emulators, enabling you to perform various actions such as launching apps, interacting with UI elements, and running automated tests.

What are appium-android-driver's main functionalities?

Launching an Android App

This feature allows you to launch an Android application on a specified device or emulator. The code sample demonstrates how to create a session and launch an app using the appium-android-driver.

const { AndroidDriver } = require('appium-android-driver');
const driver = new AndroidDriver();
await driver.createSession({
  platformName: 'Android',
  deviceName: 'emulator-5554',
  app: '/path/to/your/app.apk'
});

Interacting with UI Elements

This feature allows you to interact with UI elements within the Android application. The code sample shows how to find an element by its ID and perform a click action on it.

const { AndroidDriver } = require('appium-android-driver');
const driver = new AndroidDriver();
await driver.createSession({
  platformName: 'Android',
  deviceName: 'emulator-5554',
  app: '/path/to/your/app.apk'
});
await driver.elementById('elementId').click();

Running Automated Tests

This feature allows you to run automated tests on your Android application. The code sample demonstrates how to create a session, interact with UI elements, and retrieve text from an element for validation.

const { AndroidDriver } = require('appium-android-driver');
const driver = new AndroidDriver();
await driver.createSession({
  platformName: 'Android',
  deviceName: 'emulator-5554',
  app: '/path/to/your/app.apk'
});
await driver.elementById('elementId').click();
const text = await driver.elementById('textElementId').getText();
console.log(text);

Other packages similar to appium-android-driver

webdriverio

WebdriverIO is a popular automation framework that supports multiple platforms, including Android. It provides a rich set of APIs for interacting with web and mobile applications. Compared to appium-android-driver, WebdriverIO offers a more comprehensive solution for cross-platform automation.

detox

Detox is an end-to-end testing library for mobile applications, specifically designed for React Native apps. It provides tools for automating interactions with Android and iOS applications. While appium-android-driver focuses on general Android automation, Detox is tailored for React Native, offering a more specialized solution.

README

Appium Android Driver

Appium Android Driver is a test automation tool for Android devices. Appium Android Driver automates native, hybrid and mobile web apps, tested on simulators, emulators and real devices. Appium Android Driver is part of the Appium mobile test automation tool.

Note: Issue tracking for this repo has been disabled. Please use the main Appium issue tracker instead.

Deprecation Notice

This driver is obsolete and should not be used to automate devices running Android version 6.0 (codename Marshmallow, API level 23) or greater. Consider using UIAutomator2 or Espresso drivers for such purpose instead. Along with the fact that Android Driver is obsolete, parts of its codebase are inherited by the aforementioned drivers, so the project itself is still being partially maintained.

Usage

Import Android Driver, set desired capabilities and create a session:

import { AndroidDriver } from `appium-android-driver`

let defaultCaps = {
  app: 'path/to/your.apk',
  deviceName: 'Android',
  platformName: 'Android'
};

let driver = new AndroidDriver();
await driver.createSession(defaultCaps);

Run commands:

await driver.setOrientation('LANDSCAPE');
console.log(await driver.getOrientation()); // -> 'LANDSCAPE'

Technical details of the bootstrap system installed on the device

The system works by a com.android.uiautomator.testrunner.UiAutomatorTestCase placed on the Android device, which opens a SocketServer on port 4724. This server receives commands, converts them to appropriate Android UI Automator commands, and runs them in the context of the device.

The commands are sent through the JavaScript interface.

UiAutomator interface

Appium's UiAutomator interface has two methods start and shutdown.

async start (uiAutomatorBinaryPath, className, startDetector, ...extraParams)

start will push uiAutomatorBinary to device and start UiAutomator with className and return the SubProcess. startDetector and extraParams are optional arguments. startDetector will be used as condition to check against your output stream of test if any. extraParams will be passed along as command line arguments when starting the subProcess.

shutdown will kill UiAutomator process on the device and also kill the subProcess.

import UiAutomator from 'lib/uiautomator';
import ADB from 'appium-adb';

let adb = await ADB.createADB();
let uiAutomator = new UiAutomator(adb);

let startDetector = (s) => { return /Appium Socket Server Ready/.test(s); };
await uiAutomator.start('foo/bar.jar', 'io.appium.android.bootstrap.Bootstrap',
                        startDetector, '-e', 'disableAndroidWatchers', true);
await uiAutomator.shutdown();

Specifying and selecting devices/emulators

The driver will attempt to connect to a device/emulator based on these properties in the desiredCapabilities object:

1. avd: Launch or connect to the emulator with the given name.
2. udid: Connect to the device with the given UDID.
3. platformVersion: Connect to the first device or active emulator whose OS begins with the desired OS. This means platformVersion: 5 will take the first 5x device from the output of adb devices if there are multiple available.

If none of these capabilities are given, the driver will connect to the first device or active emulator returned from the output of adb devices.

If more than one of these capabilities are given, the driver will only use first the capability in the order above. That is, avd takes priority over udid, which takes priority over platformVersion.

API Notes

lock behaves differently in Android than it does in iOS. In Android it does not take any arguments, and locks the screen and returns immediately.

Opt-In Features (With Security Risk)

These can be enabled when running this driver through Appium, via the --allow-insecure or --relaxed-security flags.

Feature Name	Description
get_server_logs	Allows retrieving of Appium server logs via the Webdriver log interface
adb_shell	Allows execution of arbitrary adb shell commands via the "mobile: shell" command

Development

Transpile ES2015 code

npm run build

Unit Test

npm test

Some tests need particular emulators. Currently they are twofold:

1. API level 25: either set ANDROID_25_AVD environment variable to the name of avd, or defaults to "Nexus_5_API_25". If neither exist, the tests are skipped.
2. API level 24: either set ANDROID_24_NO_GMS_AVD environment variable to the name of avd, or defaults to "Nexus_5_API_24". If neither exist, the tests are skipped.

Some tests also also need a specific version of Chromedriver (specifically, 2.20), which is available in the test/assets folder, or can be specified with the CHROME_2_20_EXECUTABLE environment variable.

Changelog

5.14.4 (2023-08-14)

Miscellaneous Chores

• deps-dev: bump prettier from 2.8.8 to 3.0.1 (#834) (03333cd)