Writing to Android UI Automator output console

Question

I am writing a small wrapper over Android UI Automator. Normally we can see the test case status in the console. Can I access it and add my own messages? I have tried System.out.println. But it did not work. Is there any way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can use Instrumentation.sendStatus(..) report information to the console.

sendStatus(..) takes a Bundle and a status code as arguments. It won't let you write a string directly to the console, but each key / value pair in the Bundle will be written out like this:

INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS: key1=value1
INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS: key2=value2
INSTRUMENTATION_STATUS_CODE: -1

Note: This will only work if you're using a recent version of UiAutomator (2.0+). The old version does not have access to Instrumentation, so if you're using shell-based UiAutomator it's time to upgrade!