I found that several cases when Appium in 90% cannot find elements. They are absent from DOM.
Fo example, if we have activity and after clicking on some element some view appears (not modal or dialog) that covers the full screen - in this case is a very big possibility that elements of this view will not be found in the XML.
Is there some limitations of how deep into XML Appium could see?
Appium uses UiAutomator viewer which is the part of Android SDK. Appium does not have any custom implementation of element inspector. So for limitation whatever the UIAutomator viewer can see Appium can interact with it.
Consider it as a blind human, as long as it gets proper feedback from UI Automator Viewer it will interact with the elements. If it does not (e.g. element inside canvas) you have to make some assumption and it will interact(via precise tap and swipe) with elements.
Yes I 1000…% agree with you don’t conclude that Appium is the final solution for lots of activities that can be performed in the arena of mobile automation as particularly with custom views in native apps, appium is the worst as it is unable to find the details of the elements hence only a part of automation is only possible with Appium but there are a lot that are impossible with Appium