How to extract text from textview, resourceId is known in python

Question

How can i extract text or save it, from TextView when resourceId is known. currently am taking screenshot and using tesseract to extract text out of the image. but it takes lot of time and sometimes does mistakes as well. If am able to get text from resourceId then would save some time. have seen threads to do so with java, but want to use it in Python.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use AndroidViewClient/culebra to use python to get the text of a TextView knowing its resource id (in the example I'm using the id for the date widget):

#! /usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from com.dtmilano.android.viewclient import ViewClient

res = "com.google.android.apps.nexuslauncher:id/clock"
print(ViewClient(*ViewClient.connectToDeviceOrExit()).findViewByIdOrRaise(res).getText())

edit

The error you mentioned:

ValueError: received does not contain valid XML: Killed

is, unfortunately, a limitation of the UiAutomator backend. However, AndroidViewClient/culebra can choose a different backend in this an other situations.

You can follow the steps described at CulebraTester2-public and a few simple changes to the above script to account for some differences in the API (notice useuiautomatorhelper=True):

#! /usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

from com.dtmilano.android.viewclient import ViewClient

res = "com.google.android.apps.nexuslauncher:id/clock"
vc = ViewClient(*ViewClient.connectToDeviceOrExit(), useuiautomatorhelper=True)
print(vc.uiAutomatorHelper.ui_object2.get_text(vc.findViewByIdOrRaise(res).oid).text)

Answer 2

The solution, using Uiautomator is as simple, but it took me so long to figure it out.

text = device(resourceId="your resourceId").get_text()`