Some attributes are not visible in Appium

Issues/Bugs
1

Hello, i use appium 2.0.0-beta.67 (java).
my android application is based on kotlin and this is part of my code:

 <Button
        android:id="@+id/testBottomClick"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="test"
        android:tag="example"
        android:contentDescription="simple_description"
        android:hint="@string/test_hint" />

but when i checking this element using appium, visable are not “tag” attribute, visable contentDescription, also hint, but non ‘tag’.

i wont to visable ‘tag’ or some custom attribute field.

can anyone help me?

2

Looks like there is an implementation for AndroidFindBy(tagName=sometag) in Java Client:

3

ok this method works but i have same problem with appium inspector. what can i do?

4

Can you explain what you are trying to do? Inspector is great and all, but at the end of the day it’s just a tool that has some limitations. There are users on this forum who don’t use Inspector at all, but rely on methods like:

driver.getPageSource()

Maybe something like that could work for you?

5

I’m trying to figure out what the reason is.
appium or dev. code;

driver.getPageSource() and also appium inspector “tag” not exist

image
image.png858×1400 41.8 KB

content-desc exist but not ‘TAG’

6

This may just be a limitation of Inspector. You could try the ‘copy xml source to clipboard’ button on inspector and then search for ‘tag’ and see what you find.

I just tried on my app but we either don’t use tags, or I can’t see them. Really if you are looking for elements the best advice is to use ‘resource-id’, which is a more standard approach.

I don’t think you can see these in UIAutomatorViewer either, so I would say it’s a limitation of the tools, not a problem in your code.

7

in some cases it is possible :slight_smile:

https://medium.com/androiddevelopers/accessing-composables-from-uiautomator-cf316515edc2

all dev need is add one line of code to see tags as IDs in UiAutomator

8

Hmm. I didn’t get that this poster is using Jetpack Compose, but it’s possible!

9

Tags won’t be visible in the UiAutomator page source because they are not exposed to the accessibility framework. Although you can use Espresso driver as a possible alternative.

10

There are also several hidden accessibility attributes. They could be retrieved using the extra property. You may try to experiment with it