I’m new to Appium and have been learning on my own. I used telegram and an actual Android device as a base for learning. However I hit a snag for the following sequence:
- On the phone number input screen, I can click on country field which brings me to another screen with the list of countries
- On this screen I am able to scroll down to find the country I want to select
- I am able to click on the country and return to the phone number input screen
- But on the phone number input screen, the country field remains unpopulated, and appium returns with a StaleElementReferenceException error.
I googled and found StaleElementReferenceException on Python Selenium , so I implemented it but got a timeoutexception error, I increase the webdriverwait timeout (from 10 to 20) but it didnt solve it. i tried different selectors from appium inspector, uiautomator and xpath but both didn’t work. I added time.sleep after clicking on the country but it also didn’t work.
So I suspect something is blocking the phone number input screen from refreshing with the selected country? or that somehow Appium is still on a old phone number input screen instance? I tried then to select a country (Albania) that doesn’t require scrolling since its on top of the list, and I am able to see it populated in the country field. So somehow the scrolling is affecting it but I don’t know why and how to fix it. some further googling mentions about “screen is refreshing while waiting for element to become visible” in my case, the screen doesnt refresh with the selected value even after explicit wait. Any ideas?
After scrolling, selecting a country, the value should be reflected in the country field and I’m able to assert that its the correct value/
current Flow: empty Input screen → Select Country screen → still empty Input screen
expected Flow: empty Input screen → Select Country screen → Input screen populated with selected country
def test_select_country(self):
#navigate to phone num input screen
startMessenging_btn = wait_for_element(self.driver, AppiumBy.ANDROID_UIAUTOMATOR, 'new UiSelector().text("Start Messaging")')
assert startMessenging_btn is not None
startMessenging_btn.click()
#tap and navigate to country selection screen
phone_num_screen_country_element = wait_for_element(self.driver, AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID, 'Country')
assert phone_num_screen_country_element is not None
phone_num_screen_country_element.click()
#scroll down to selected country
scroll_to_country = self.driver.find_element(AppiumBy.ANDROID_UIAUTOMATOR,
'new UiScrollable(new UiSelector().scrollable(true).instance(0)).scrollIntoView(new UiSelector().text("🇧🇪 Belgium").instance(0))'
)
assert scroll_to_country.is_displayed()
# somehow this only works when selecting a country without scrolling, it doesnt work after scrolling is completed,
# I can see the click on device but the next screen doesnt reflect the selected country
select_country = self.driver.find_element(AppiumBy.ANDROID_UIAUTOMATOR,'new UiSelector().text("🇧🇪 Belgium")')
assert select_country.text == "🇧🇪 Belgium"
select_country.click()
# this is where staleelementreferenceexception was found, does appium reloads this screen when it comes back to it?
phone_num_screen_country_populated = wait_for_element(self.driver, AppiumBy.XPATH, '//android.widget.TextView[@text="🇧🇪 Belgium"]')
assert phone_num_screen_country_populated.text == "🇧🇪 Belgium"
def wait_for_element(driver: 'WebDriver', locator: str, value: str, timeout_sec: float = 10) -> 'WebElement':
"""Wait until the element located
Args:
driver: WebDriver instance
locator: Locator like WebDriver, Mobile JSON Wire Protocol
(e.g. `appium.webdriver.common.appiumby.AppiumBy.ACCESSIBILITY_ID`)
value: Query value to locator
timeout_sec: Maximum time to wait the element. If time is over, `TimeoutException` is thrown
Raises:
`selenium.common.exceptions.TimeoutException`
Returns:
The found WebElement
"""
ignored_exceptions=(NoSuchElementException,StaleElementReferenceException,)
return WebDriverWait(driver, timeout_sec, ignored_exceptions=ignored_exceptions).\
until(EC.presence_of_element_located((locator, value)))