/Appium5-WinAppDriver

How to run WinAppDriver based Windows automation through Appium 5

Primary LanguageC#

How to run WinAppDriver with Appium 5

Do check my Udemy courses related to Windows Automation with WinAppDriver and running automation on Azure DevOps

Appium WinAppDriver C# Windows Desktop UI Automation Testing

Azure DevOps Build Pipelines: Run Windows UI Automation & CI

Pre-requisites:

  • You must have installed Node.JS and Appium 2.0
  • The command for updating existing Appium installation is given below
appium driver install--source = npm appium - windows - driver
  • The command to see the list of installed appium drivers
appium driver list --installed
  • How to see all appium drivers
appium driver list

List of Appium Drivers Imgur

  • You must have installed appium windows driver
  • The command for appium windows driver installation
appium driver install --source=npm appium-windows-driver

The differnce between Appium 4 and Appium 5, how it impacts WinAppDriver automation

In the past, it was possible for your scripts to directly talk to the WinAppDriver. But in the latest version of Appium, everything must flow through an Appium Driver. In case of Windows this driver is appium-windows-driver. The Appium Windows Driver has a separate repository on GitHub. You also need to install WinAppDriver on the machine where you want to run the automation.

Using AppiumServiceBuilder

If you want to use WinAppDriver with Appium 5, you'll need to use the AppiumServiceBuilder class. The code for creating an AppiumServiceBuilder which works with WinAppDriver is given below:

var appiumLocalService = new AppiumServiceBuilder()
                .UsingAnyFreePort()
                .WithLogFile(new FileInfo(@"E:\logs\TestLog.txt"))
                .WithStartUpTimeOut(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(60))
                .Build();

            appiumLocalService.Start();

There's one more caveat, if you use By.Id or By.Name in Appium 5 they get translated to By.Css under the hood. When this happens, the WinAppDriver is unable to locate controls for you. My solution to this problem is using By.XPath as following:

        public static By XPathById(this string id)
        {
            Assert.NotNull(id);
            return By.XPath($"//*[@Id='{id}']");
        }

These extension methods are also available in this repository. This code sample shows you how you can run WinAppDriver based automation with Appium 5.