Hybrid App - chrome driver fails to find chrome

[kamaroyl]

Hi there!
I’m relatively new to using appium/webdriver tech; I’m trying to automate an app on android (real device) that launches a broswer and after switching contexts the driver fails with an error:
Error: Failed to start Chromedriver session: An error occurred (Original error: chrome not reachable
[Chromedriver] (Driver info: chromedriver=2.37.544337 (8c0344a12e552148c185f7d5117db1f28d6c9e85),platform=Mac OS X 10.13.4 x86_64))
[Chromedriver] at Object.wrappedLogger.errorAndThrow (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/appium-support/lib/logging.js:78:13)
[Chromedriver] at Chromedriver.callee$2$0$ (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/appium-chromedriver/lib/chromedriver.js:411:13)
[Chromedriver] at tryCatch (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:67:40)
[Chromedriver] at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.invoke [as _invoke] (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:315:22)
[Chromedriver] at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.prototype.(anonymous function) [as throw] (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:100:21)
[Chromedriver] at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.invoke (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:136:37)

I am using chromedriver 2.37.544337 Appium 1.8.1 and can manually interact with the chrome browser on the phone using the chromedriver
I did notice that the desired capabilities are assuming I’m still in my app when launching the same android package instead of chrome. . . could that be the problem? Is there a way to interact with that without changing appium code?
{“desiredCapabilities”:{“chromeOptions”:{“androidPackage”:“my.app”,“androidUseRunningApp”:true,“androidDeviceSerial”:xxxxxxxxxxxx"}}}

Any advice would be much appreciated!

[bennid]

Check what version of chrome you have on your phone / emulator

adb shell dumpsys package com.android.chrome | grep versionName

Then take a look at this page to see if your version of chrome is just too old for chromedriver 2.37

Downloads - ChromeDriver - WebDriver for Chrome

If it’s too old, you’ll have to download the older chromedriver, and then specify the chromedriver to use when starting up appium:

--chromedriver-executable <path_to_chromedriver>

[kamaroyl]

I figured it out finally!
instead of switching contexts, which was failing, I ended up just switching activities -

self.web_driver.start_activity('com.android.chrome', 'com.google.android.apps.chrome.Main')

and switching back once I was done

[Avinash1]

Hi @kamaroyl… I’m also new to appium so could you share your code for opening chrome?

[kamaroyl]

Hi Avinash!

The code I posted was all I had to do. I’m interacting with hockey app, which launches the chrome app initially, then I use

def _web_app(self, username, password): try: self.web_driver.start_activity('com.android.chrome', 'com.google.android.apps.chrome.Main') _log.info("switched to chrome") sleep(5) information = self.web_driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@text='INFORMATION']").is_enabled() if not information: _log.info("need to log in") self.web_driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@text='Email']").send_keys(username) self.web_driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@text='Password']").send_keys(password) self.web_driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@text='Sign In']").click() sleep(5) _log.info("clicking authorize") self.web_driver.find_element_by_xpath("//*[@text='Authorize']").click() _log.debug("clicked authorize") return True except NoSuchElementException: _log.error("No element found for login") return False

I found Chrome’s package and Name through some quick googling, though you can always do a dumpsys

Note, I am using Android. If I get ios working I will give an update