appium-ios-device

appium-ios-device

Appium API for dealing with iOS devices. This is mainly a rewrite of libimobiledevice in Node.js. The APIs allow Appium to talk directly to the phone over usbmuxd.

More information can be found at the links below:

• libimobiledevice
• iPhone Wiki

Note This module is used and tested by appium-xcuitest-driver, which expects macOS as the host platform with Xcode. Some features may only work partially on other platforms.

Usage

This module should be used over the utilities and services modules or exported classes in documents due to the complexity of iOS communication. When a new services is implemented, it should be added and made available over the services module.

Methods

• utilities.getConnectedDevices
• utilities.getOSVersion
• utilities.getDeviceTime
• utilities.getDeviceName
• utilities.getDeviceInfo
• utilities.startLockdownSession
• utilities.connectPort
• utilities.connectPortSSL
• utilities.fetchImageFromGithubRepo
• services.startSyslogService
• services.startWebInspectorService
• services.startInstallationProxyService
• services.startSimulateLocationService
• services.startAfcService
• services.startNotificationProxyService
• services.startHouseArrestService
• services.startInstrumentService
• services.startTestmanagerdService
• services.startMCInstallService
• services.startImageMounterService

Classes

• Xctest
  • Allows invoking pre-installed xctest app from iOS devices. No Xcode installation is required. This class simulates the procedure which Xcode uses to invoke xctests.
  • new Xctest(udid, xctestBundleId, targetBundleId, opts)
    • udid - string Device udid.
    • xctestBundleId - string - Bundle Id of xctest app on device. The app must be installed on device.
    • targetBundleId - string - Test target bundle id. null by default.
    • opts - optional addition options to specific XCTestConfiguration and app launch env.
      • conf - properties to override in XCTestConfiguration.
        • productModuleName - string | null
        • targetApplicationArguments - string[] | null
        • testsToRun - string[] | null
        • testsToSkip - string[] | null
      • env - object - key-value pairs to append in xctest app environment
  • xctest.start()
    • Start xctest process. If this method has been called before and the stop() method has not been called, calling this again would return directly.
    • Throws: If xctest bundle id invalid or not installed.
  • xctest.stop()
    • Stop xctest process.

Mount Developer Image

When using a higher version of iOS devices with a lower version of Xcode or other non-macOS operating systems, most of the functions in services or Xctest may not be available because the developer image is not mounted. Sometimes it can be solved automatically by opening Xcode and waiting for a while. But more often you need to manually download and mount the developer image as follows：

• Download .dmg file with new Xcode(sometimes beta version is needed) from Apple Developer Downloads Page.
• Unarchive new Xcode from .dmg file without replacing old one.
• Find the folder named after the target iOS version in (New Xcode.app)/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport. A DeveloperDiskImage.dmg and a DeveloperDiskImage.dmg.signature should be inside that folder.
• Copy the folder you found from last step and paste to (Old Xcode.app)/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport.
• The operations in the above two steps are also applicable to platforms other than the iPhone. e.g. the folder for tvOS is (Xcode.app)/Contents/Developer/Platforms/AppleTVOS.platform/DeviceSupport.
• Restart your old Xcode and reconnect your devices, wait for a while until the "preparing device for development" prompt disappears.
• You can also mount this image using ideviceimagemounter binary file compiled by libimobiledevice project on your operating system.

These operations are very cumbersome. Fortunately there are many repositories of these developer images in the open source community. The folders mentioned in the above process are zipped and uploaded into open source repositories according to different versions. You can also make your own mirror repository on GitHub in a similar way. With services.startImageMounterService and utilities.fetchImageFromGithubRepo, you can automate the whole process cross-platform.

As an example, assuming we are using a repo from https://github/example/iOSDeviceSupport. All the .zip files are inside DeviceSupportFiles/iOS folder of root. We can check the mount status, download and mount the image using following code:

import { services, utilities } from 'appium-ios-device';
import _ from 'lodash';
const { startImageMounterService } = services;
...
async function checkAndMountDeveloperImage(udid) {
  const imageMountService = await startImageMounterService(udid);
  try {
    const mountStatus = await imageMountService.isDeveloperImageMounted();
    if (!mountStatus) {
      const { fetchImageFromGithubRepo } = utilities;
      const repoOpts = {
        githubRepo: 'example/iOSDeviceSupport',
        subFolderList: ['DeviceSupportFiles', 'iOS']
      }
      const downloadedImagePath = await fetchImageFromGithubRepo(udid, repoOpts);
      if (!_.isEmpty(downloadedImagePath)) {
        const {developerImage, developerImageSignature} = downloadedImagePath;
        await imageMountService.mount(developerImage, developerImageSignature);
      }
    }
  } catch(e) {
    // Failed to mount, do something...
  } finally {
    imageMountService.close();
  }
}

Environment

• If exists, USBMUXD_SOCKET_ADDRESS is used to get usbmuxd socket address. Mostly useful in cases where the usbmuxd is run by a non-root user.

Troubleshooting

• Debugging Large Frame Size Issues - Comprehensive guide for troubleshooting "The frame is bigger than expected" errors with iOS devices

Test

npm test

Similar packages

Other packages similar to appium-ios-device

node-ios-device

The node-ios-device package provides similar functionalities for interacting with iOS devices, such as listing connected devices and retrieving device information. However, it is more focused on basic device management and lacks some of the advanced features provided by appium-ios-device, such as file management and process control.

ios-deploy

The ios-deploy package is primarily used for deploying iOS apps to devices from the command line. While it offers some device interaction capabilities, its main focus is on app deployment rather than the broader range of device management features provided by appium-ios-device.