Appium+ WebdriverIO finding element issues

Question

I created a small test android app which has a text box and a button and am able to build this and launch on a real device (android) using WebDriverIO.

However, when I try to select elements I can't locate them.

Example: the text field has the following properties: id: editTextTextPersonName

input type: textPersonName

contentDescription: @string/fldName1 (which is the string "helpme" in the xml)

Using UIAutomatorViewer I can see the field has the following:

resouce-id** = com.example.myfirstapp:id/editTextTextPersonName

package = android.widget.EditText

class = android.widget.EditText

content-desc: helpme

However, I cannot locate this using WebDriverIO.

I have tried $('~helpme').setValue('test') but that doesn't work.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

To be honest, you're doing everything correct. AFAIK there is an issue with the $('~helpme') selector within WebdriverIO/Appium not being able to find the correct element / failing on Android.

What I did in the past, especially if I needed to use cross-platform locators, was that I created a method like this

const locatorStrategy = (selector: string): string => {
  return driver.isIOS ? `id=${selector}` : `//*[@content-desc="${selector}"]`;
};

which could be used like this

$(locatorStrategy('input-email'));

You can also validate your selector with Appium Inspector. This is how Appium Inspector looks like

You can then press this button

then select XPATH and add this //*[@content-desc="input-email"] selector

hit Search which will lead to this

So in your case, if you would use or something like above or just this

$('//*[@content-desc="helpme"]').setValue('test')

then it should work