Appium Docker for Android

Why is this approach needed at first place?

• Helps in quick & easier setup of automation environment for Appium + Android
• Without this approach, you'll need to do each of the automation setup steps manually; which can be slow and error prone

Images Included:

• appium/appium - Docker Image to run appium tests on real Android devices.
• To execute in Android emulator's please visit docker-android

How to Build:

$ docker build -t "appium/appium:local" -f Appium/Dockerfile Appium

Quick Start

1. Connect Android device to the machine via USB

2. Run Appium-Docker-Android

   $ docker run --privileged -d -p 4723:4723  -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb --name appium-container appium/appium
   

   OR you can get the id of the device via this command ls -l /dev/serial/by-id and pass the device-id to container to have more security

   docker run --privileged -d -p 4723:4723 --device=/dev/<your-device-id> --name appium-container appium/appium
   

3. Run following command to verify adb devices can detect the connected android device.

   $ docker exec -it appium-container adb devices
   

   On Windows OS, you need to specify the host to host.docker.internal

   $ docker exec -it appium-container adb -H host.docker.internal devices
   

4. Run UI Test with following test configuration

   Push the apk file into the container
   $ docker cp /home/myuser/localfolder/app-debug.apk appium-container:/home/androidusr/sample.apk
   
   Desired Capabilities:
   
   private void androidSetup() throws MalformedURLException {
           caps.setCapability("deviceName", "Android");
           caps.setCapability("app", "/home/androidusr/sample.apk");
           //Get the IP Address of boot2docker
           //docker inspect $(docker ps -q) | grep IPA
           driver = new AndroidDriver<MobileElement>(new URL("http://xx.xx.xx.xx:4723/wd/hub"), caps);
   }
   

   On Windows OS, you need to set the capability appium:remoteAdbHost to host.docker.internal. This capability is supported by various drivers: UiAutomator2, Espresso, Flutter.

Additional configuration

Share Android identification key

Each time, you will (re)create container, connected to container devices will ask for authorization after first connection. To prevent that, you can share one identity through all created containers. To do that, you should:

• Connect all devices to docker physical machine
• Run adb devices
• Authorize all devices (do not forget to check Always allow this computer)

• run your containers with parameter -v ~/.android:/home/androidusr/.android

For example:

$ docker run --privileged -d -p 4723:4723 -v ~/.android:/home/androidusr/.android -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb --name appium-container appium/appium

Connect Each Device to a Separate Container

In certain use cases you may want to have a single Appium-Docker-Android container running for each device. To achieve this you must run adb kill-server and then provide the --device option to docker run:

$ docker run -d -p 4723:4723 --device /dev/bus/usb/XXX/YYY:/dev/bus/usb/XXX/YYY -v ~/.android:/root/.android --name device1 appium/appium
$ docker run -d -p 4724:4723 --device /dev/bus/usb/XXX/ZZZ:/dev/bus/usb/XXX/ZZZ -v ~/.android:/root/.android --name device2 appium/appium

Connect to Android devices by Air

Appium-Docker-Android can be connected with Android devices by Air.

To do that you need to configure android device, according to official manual

Then run docker container with following parameters:

• REMOTE_ADB=true
• ANDROID_DEVICES=<android_device_host>:<android_device_port> [,<android_device_host>:<android_device_port>]
• REMOTE_ADB_POLLING_SEC=60 (default: 5, interval between polling the list of connected devices in order to connect to lost remote devices)

$ docker run -d -p 4723:4723 -e REMOTE_ADB=true -e ANDROID_DEVICES=192.168.0.5:5555,192.168.0.6:5555 -e REMOTE_ADB_POLLING_SEC=60

Additional Appium parameter

APPIUM_ADDITIONAL_PARAMS="<additional-appium-parameter-here>", e.g. --relaxed-security --allow-insecure chromedriver_autodownload --allow-insecure adb_shell

Connect to Selenium Grid

Appium-Docker-Android can be connected with selenium grid by passing following parameters:

• CONNECT_TO_GRID=true
• APPIUM_HOST=<ip_address_of_appium_server>
• APPIUM_PORT=<port_of_appium_server>
• SELENIUM_HOST=<ip_address_of_selenium_hub>
• SELENIUM_PORT=<port_of_selenium_hub>

$ docker run --privileged -d -p 4723:4723 -e CONNECT_TO_GRID=true -e APPIUM_HOST="127.0.0.1" -e APPIUM_PORT=4723 -e SELENIUM_HOST="172.17.0.1" -e SELENIUM_PORT=4444 -v /dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb --name appium-container appium/appium

Custom Node Config

The image generates the node config file, if you would like to provide your own config pass the following parameters:

• CONNECT_TO_GRID=true
• CUSTOM_NODE_CONFIG=true
• -v <path_to_config>:/root/nodeconfig.json

Docker compose

There is an example of compose file to simulate the connection between selenium hub and appium server with connected device(s) in docker solution.

$ docker-compose up -d