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This driver is obsolete and should not be used to automate devices running Android version 6.0 (codename Marshmallow, API level 23) or greater.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 Along with the fact that Android Driver is obsolete, parts of its codebase are inherited by the aforementioned drivers, so the project itself is still being partially maintained.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

Building the Bootstrap Jar

This package builds with an older version of the Android tools, using ant.

To build the Java system, make sure ant is installed.

In order to have both the current Android tools and the ones needed for this package, do the following:

1. Copy your $ANDROID_HOME directory (where the Android SDK is installed) to another location.
2. Download the Android 22 tools
   • MacOS: http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/tools_r22-macosx.zip
   • Linux: http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/tools_r22-linux.zip
   • Windows: http://dl-ssl.google.com/android/repository/tools_r22-windows.zip
3. Replace the tools directory in the copied Android SDK directory with the Android 22 tools just downloaded
4. Create/edit bootstrap/local.properties file, adding
   • sdk.dir=/path/to/copied/android/sdk

Now you should be able to build the Jar file by running

npm run build:bootstrap

The AppiumBootstrap.jar file is committed to source, and isn't built during the publish step. Any updates to it need to be committed. To build the jar, run gulp ant.

Install Dependencies

npm run clean

Transpile ES2015 code

npm run build

Watch

npm run watch

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.