Appium: Exception: Invalid server instance exception has occured: There is no installed nodes

Question

I tried to start the appium server programmatically but encounter error. How to resolve this issues? I have nodejs installed and appium installed and environemnt variable set properly. I"m using maven appium java client 6.1.0 and selenium 3.14.0. Please help. A billion thanks for your help.

Code:

try {
            File appDir = new File(System.getProperty("user.dir"));
            File app = new File(appDir, "..\\apk\\Flipkart.apk");

            // apk Capabilities
            DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();
            caps.setCapability("deviceName", "Sony Xperia Z2");
            caps.setCapability("BROWSER_NAME", "Android");
            caps.setCapability("platformVersion", "6.0");
            caps.setCapability(MobileCapabilityType.PLATFORM_NAME, Platform.ANDROID);
            //caps.setCapability("udid", "WUJ01N4RQ3"); // DeviceId from "adb devices" command
            caps.setCapability("platformName", "Android");
            caps.setCapability("app", app.getAbsolutePath());
            caps.setCapability("appPackage", "com.flipkart.android");
            caps.setCapability("appActivity","com.flipkart.android.SplashActivity");

            // Appium Capabilities
            caps.setCapability("skipUnlock","true");
            caps.setCapability("noReset","false");

            appiumBuilder = new AppiumServiceBuilder();
            appiumBuilder.withIPAddress("127.0.0.1");
            appiumBuilder.usingPort(47233);
            appiumBuilder.withCapabilities(caps);
            appiumBuilder.withStartUpTimeOut(3, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
            appiumBuilder.withLogFile(new File(System.getProperty("user.dir") + "\\log\\appium.log"));
            appiumBuilder.withArgument(GeneralServerFlag.SESSION_OVERRIDE);
            appiumBuilder.withArgument(GeneralServerFlag.LOG_LEVEL, "DEBUG");
            appiumBuilder.withArgument(GeneralServerFlag.ASYNC_TRACE, "true");

            appiumServer = AppiumDriverLocalService.buildService(appiumBuilder);
            appiumServer.start();
            //new URL("http://127.0.0.1:47233/wd/hub")
            driver = new AndroidDriver<MobileElement>(appiumServer, caps);
            driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

        } catch (Exception ex) {
            LogManager.logger.log(Level.INFO, "Exception: " + ex.getMessage());
        }

Error Log:

INFO: Exception: Invalid server instance exception has occured: There is no installed nodes! Please install node via NPM (https://www.npmjs.com/package/appium#using-node-js) or download and install Appium app (http://appium.io/downloads.html) Jan 03, 2019 3:52:12 PM com.peterwkc.testManager.AndroidManager tearDown INFO: Exception: null

EDIT: I believe appium source code cannot detect my installation of nodejs and appium.

Answer 1

Try installing Appium globally. This resolved the issue for me.

npm install -g appium