In any case you will be able to listen with Appium ONLY system OS events! Not your app.
Your app should provide api interface how to listen it events and get e.g. count of unread messages. Using this api you first must be able to make it manually using any method. E.g. send. Http get request to url and port that listen your app.
The app does not provide any API. And its not my own app.
The question is how to automatically listen with Appium for a specific action (like an incoming message to the app) and trigger some action like saving the body of the message or what ever.
So basically the Appium “Test” Script should be sit and wait, do nothing until a message comes in to the app, then catch up on this “event” and do something with the message arrived.
So I am not sure what you mean by “manually”?
I talk about WhatsApp.
I want to realize something like a chat bot but instead of replying to the incoming message the code should save all phone numbers from incoming messages to contacts for e.g
Please see:
But this is some Java browser automation example using Selenium Webdriver and you cannot save the phone number of the incoming messages to contacts for e.g because you don´t have access to contacts on web.whatsapp.com.
So my idea was to do the same with Appium directly on some emulated device instead.
it is NOT native android app BUT web version 
with web you can do much more.
your example does not listen for anything BUT just in loop looking for appearing some web elements and read them.
Yes. Thats actually what i mean. And the same functionlity can be done within a Appium JavaScript Client? Just with the difference instead of just replying the message i want to save the phone numbers of the messages received and add them to the contact list.
@lddd you can. but i can not help you with Appium JavaScript. never used it as client for appium.
Ok thanks a lot.
I am very new to both Java and JavaScript 
Now 2 more questions:
Lets say it´s a Java Client. How to keep such Test running in the background so it´s continuously waiting for new messages and do something with the results? I would have to execute such Client Script every second by cronjob or how is this be done?
Would it be possible to do other actions in the same Appium Test like sending a message? What if both actions would happen to the same time? I guess its not possible for Appium to parallel execute two functions on the same App window running only 1 Test for the same device?
thanks for all the kind help so far. Very nice.
ok. at least now we have details. i suggest use 2 driver strategy. one driver opens web (no matter on computer or on some emulated device) and looking for messages. another driver does another job with another device/web (depending what exactly you need). i made test like a chat - when 2 apps open on different devices and one sending something, another one respond.
Hey Aleksel.
One automation test for each task sounds like a good idea. 1 for reading messages, 1 for sending messages.
I think browser automation for my case is not possible because on WhatsApp (web.whatsapp.com) you cannot add new contacts. And i want to automatically save phone numbers for all incoming messages containing a specific keyword
For example: A person sends “subscribe”
Now i want to have one Appium Test running in the background of my server doing this. It should permanently scan all incoming messages on the emulated device and add numbers to the contact list.
