Appium-REPL

Simple REPL (Read-eval-print Loop) for controlling mobile apps through Appium

Why?

wd, or Web Driver/Selenium 2 Client, already contains a REPL detailed here however it requires some tedious boilerplate in order to get into useful REPL operations. This package aims to allow you to bypass that initial effort and get right into a meaningful REPL context.

Getting Started

npm install appium-repl -g to install this module globally

Before Use

Create a .appium-repl.json where ever you intend to execute appium-repl from. This could be inside a project and then kept under your own version control for other developers to use.

Example .appium-repl.json

{
  "TestApp1" :
    {
      "deviceName": "iPhone Simulator",
      "app": "./path/from/execution/to/your/deployable.app",
      "platformVersion": "10.1",
      "newCommandTimeout": 100000,
      "autoLaunch" : "true",
      "platformName":"iOS",
      "device": "iPhone 6s"
    }
}

Putting it all together

1. npm install -g appium-repl
2. create your configuration .appium-repl.json
3. run the appium server

• find appium here
• ensure that you have the appropriate XCode/Android SDKs installed
• run it, consult appium's documentation if any issues occur

4. run appium-repl
5. choose your configuration option (.appium-repl.json can have any number of defined configurations)
6. access driver directly from the REPL. refer to wd docs for relevant methods
7. profit?

Example REPL activity (with a Cordova App)

Comments and newlines added for readability

// See all contexts in the app under test
>>driver.contexts() 
 > CALL contexts()
 > RESPONSE contexts() ["NATIVE_APP","WEBVIEW_56394.1"]
[ 'NATIVE_APP', 'WEBVIEW_56394.1' ]

// Set the context
>>driver.context('WEBVIEW_56394.1');
 > CALL context("WEBVIEW_56394.1")
 > RESPONSE context("WEBVIEW_56394.1")
undefined

// Find an element
>>driver.elementById('dashboard-login-button')
 > CALL elementById("dashboard-login-button")
 > RESPONSE elementById("dashboard-login-button") {"ELEMENT":"5000"}
Element {
  value: '5000',
  browser:
   EventEmitter {
     domain: null,
     _events: { status: [Function], command: [Function] },
     _eventsCount: 2,
     _maxListeners: undefined,
     configUrl:
      Url {
        protocol: 'http:',
        slashes: true,
        auth: null,
        host: 'localhost:4723',
        port: '4723',
        hostname: 'localhost',
        hash: null,
        search: '',
        query: {},
        pathname: '/wd/hub',
        path: '/wd/hub',
        href: 'http://localhost:4723/wd/hub' },
     sauceTestPageRoot: 'https://saucelabs.com/jobs',
     sauceRestRoot: 'https://saucelabs.com/rest/v1',
     noAuthConfigUrl:
      Url {
        protocol: 'http:',
        slashes: true,
        host: 'localhost:4723',
        port: '4723',
        hostname: 'localhost',
        hash: null,
        search: null,
        query: null,
        pathname: '/wd/hub',
        path: '/wd/hub',
        href: 'http://localhost:4723/wd/hub' },
     defaultCapabilities:
      { browserName: 'firefox',
        version: '',
        javascriptEnabled: true,
        platform: 'ANY' },
     _httpConfig:
      { timeout: undefined,
        retries: 3,
        retryDelay: 15,
        baseUrl: undefined,
        proxy: undefined },
     sessionID: '5ea660da-0541-407c-91cc-f1fa32cf9421' } }
>>

If you press tab it will show you all possible options that are available. If a driver command returns a array then current would become an array.