[💡 Feature]: add new mobile custom command to relaunch the app

[wswebcreation]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

The launchApp command is deprecated and should be replaced with an alternative

Describe the solution you'd like.

This is a sample we use for our native demo app. We need to check the bundleId/packageName of the current app under test.

async function relaunchApp() {
  const PACKAGE_NAME = 'com.wdiodemoapp'
  const BUNDLE_ID = 'org.reactjs.native.example.wdiodemoapp'
  const appIdentifier = browser.isAndroid ? { 'appId': PACKAGE_NAME } : { 'bundleId': BUNDLE_ID }
  const terminateCommand = 'mobile: terminateApp'
  const launchCommand = `mobile: ${driver.isAndroid ? 'activateApp' : 'launchApp'}`

  await browser.execute(terminateCommand, appIdentifier)
  await browser.execute(launchCommand, appIdentifier)
}

Describe alternatives you've considered.

No response

Additional context

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[christian-bromann]

It would be actually nice if this could be a native Appium command. I wonder what Appium does when calling the refresh WebDriver command? We could just run above code in the Appium server.

@jlipps what do you think?

[jlipps]

I guess there's no reason it couldn't be in Appium itself. What do you think @mykola-mokhnach?

[mykola-mokhnach]

I guess there's no reason it couldn't be in Appium itself. What do you think @mykola-mokhnach?

I don't see how such API could look like. In Android and iOS extensions to run apps work differently, not saying about other drivers.

For example, in order to restart an iOS app one could perform mobile: launchApp and xctest automatically terminates it if it is already running.
In Android for the mobile: startActivity API one must set stop arg to true in order for the activity to be restarted upon launch.

[christian-bromann]

I don't see how such API could look like.

Ideally it would be great if we could the operation of restarting an app within the refresh WebDriver command (/session/{session id}/refresh). To simplify this, it would require the xcuitest and uiautomator2 driver to keep the information which app was or is currently opened. Can you confirm if these drivers are capable to do that? Maybe Appium could call getCurrentActivity for example in Android as part of the execution.

[mykola-mokhnach]

Unfortunately it's not so simple. The current activity might not be launchable. Also, we don't know what/if we need to apply any additional arguments or environment variables on startup.

[christian-bromann]

The current activity might not be launchable.

In this case the refresh command should/would fail.

Also, we don't know what/if we need to apply any additional arguments or environment variables on startup.

Is there a way to pull these information before we shut down the app and use them when starting the app again?