Appium Inspector related queries

Issues/Bugs
1

Mac: 10.9.4
appium: 1.2.2

Clicking on Inspector icon nothing is happening ( have filed 2 tickets for this issue in latest and old version )
https://github.com/appium/appium-dot-app/issues/382

  1. What is the exact usage of this functionality ?

  2. In case this doesn’t work , is there other work around ?

  3. It’ll be nice to have frequent releases for this tool ( my first issue was closed 26 days before )

  4. sometimes it shows error message “Could Not Launch Appium Inspector”

As many people have started using Appium , it’ll be good to get critical bugs fixes as frequently as possible.

Thanks & Regards,
Vikram

2

Hi Vikram,

Inspector connects to your device or simulator and gives you quick access to the web elements of the application you are running and enables quick testings of actions appium enables you: swipe, tap, etc…
If it fails to launch on android it means that your device/simulator is not connected/down, or that you haven’t installed all required applications for android testings, or defined the desired capabilities in the android screen.
Either way, in your screen it shows that appium server was not launched, and for the inspector to work, appium server needs to be up.
Regards,
Shiran

3

Hi Shiran,

Thanks for reply, below are the observation / more info

  1. Appium GUI tool is very buggy as of now, sometimes it works and sometimes doesn’t
  2. clicked launch to start appium server
  3. ran arc command , this launched emulator + apk file

I could achieve it to work at last :smile:

Best Regards,
Vikram

4

Good to hear.
And yeah- there are some things missing in the inspector, especially in android I understood things are missing.

Welcome to appium :slight_smile:

5

Hi @VikramSilk

I had a similar problem with the iOS app and found an easy workaround: I was using the Appium apo to start the server and then click to inspect (which started the simulator, installed the app and then started the inspected). If often failed, usually timeout.

What I do when I want to use the inspector is starting the server from the command line and run a random test with a binding.pry - just to install the app and have it running. Then I open Appium app and without starting the server, I just click the inspector icon and usually works very well.

Hope it helps.

6

Hi Palas,

When I start server from Appium GUI tool and run arc , it launches emulator with app.

But when I’m starting appium server from command line by either of below 2 commands
appium or appium & , it is throwing below error message

error: Failed to start an Appium session, err was: Error: Could not find zipalign in tools, platform-tools, or supported build-tools under “/Applications/AndroidStudio.app/sdk”; do you have android SDK or build-tools installed into this location? Supported build tools are: 17.0.0, 18.0.1, 19.0.0, 19.0.1, android-4.2.2, android-4.3, android-4.4
info: Error: Could not find zipalign in tools, platform-tools, or supported build-tools under “/Applications/AndroidStudio.app/sdk”; do you have android SDK or build-tools installed into this location? Supported build tools are: 17.0.0, 18.0.1, 19.0.0, 19.0.1, android-4.2.2, android-4.3, android-4.4
at ADB.checkSdkBinaryPresent (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/devices/android/adb.js:95:10)
at ADB.checkZipAlignPresent (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/devices/android/adb.js:138:8)
at ADB.zipAlignApk (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/devices/android/adb.js:452:8)
at null. (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/devices/android/adb.js:491:10)
at ChildProcess.exithandler (child_process.js:646:7)
at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:98:17)
at maybeClose (child_process.js:756:16)
at Socket. (child_process.js:969:11)
at Socket.emit (events.js:95:17)
at Pipe.close (net.js:465:12)
info: Responding to client with error: {“status”:33,“value”:{“message”:“A new session could not be created. (Original error: Could not find zipalign in tools, platform-tools, or supported build-tools under “/Applications/AndroidStudio.app/sdk”; do you have android SDK or build-tools installed into this location? Supported build tools are: 17.0.0, 18.0.1, 19.0.0, 19.0.1, android-4.2.2, android-4.3, android-4.4)”,“origValue”:“Could not find zipalign in tools, platform-tools, or supported build-tools under “/Applications/AndroidStudio.app/sdk”; do you have android SDK or build-tools installed into this location? Supported build tools are: 17.0.0, 18.0.1, 19.0.0, 19.0.1, android-4.2.2, android-4.3, android-4.4”},“sessionId”:null}
POST /wd/hub/session 500 45666ms - 728b

Note:
I have appium repo cloned locally and I have updated it before trying above steps

Please let me know what am I doing wrong here ?

Q 2. I couldn’t find answer for starting server by “appium” or “appium &” , what’s the difference between these 2 ?

Thanks & Regards,
Vikram

7

update on this thread

As per instructions http://appium.io/slate/en/tutorial/android.html?ruby#install-ruby

started appium server with command node . and it worked fine.

Please clarify different between commands “node .” , “appium” and “appium &”

thanks & regards,
Vikram

8

I always use appium directly from the command line, but I understand how there’s frustrations running the native desktop apps. We need more people to help maintain/write them, it’s all open source ^.^

I wish I could spend more time on them, but there’s so much to do for appium itself right now.

9

Thanks Jonahss , but frankly appium is looking more matured in short time as compared to Selenium in 2006-07.

I’m sure & hope that; it will become more stable faster than selenium in last decade :smile:

1 Like
10

thanks for the support! We are working hard!