How to start appium server programmatically in Python

Question

I want to write a android test framework using Appium and python. Appium link: http://appium.io/

So after installing appium with npm, to start its server I need to execute the command "appium" in terminal.It will start the server. It looks something like this after starting:

    ranits-MacBook-Pro:$ appium
[Appium] Welcome to Appium v1.8.1
[Appium] Appium REST http interface listener started on 0.0.0.0:4723

But I need to start the appium server from my code using python?

Any help?

Answer 1

The Python client actually comes with a handy module called AppiumService that you can use to programmatically start/stop an Appium server.

from appium.webdriver.appium_service import AppiumService

appium_service = AppiumService()

To start,

self.appium_service.start()

To stop,

self.appium_service.stop()

That's literally it, and I believe it's a cleaner way to start/stop the Appium server than issuing an OS system command to like in the above solution(s).

Answer 2

First of all its good to check manually if "appium" command on shell launches the appium server or not(Seems in your case its working fine). In my case it was not with the installation of Appium desktop version. Posting the details of what i did to resolve this in case it helps someone:

1. Installed npm (as part of node installation, MSI available at nodejs.org)
2. npm install -g appium

Now to answer your main question, below is what i used in my Python script to start the appium server on a new window so that it runs separately from the rest of the script execution:

import os
os.system("start /B start cmd.exe @cmd /k appium") 

In case you want to change the port(e.g. to 4728) of the appium server (may be when you have multiple servers for multiple devices) you can use following:

os.system("start /B start cmd.exe @cmd /k appium -a 127.0.0.1 -p 4728")

if you want to stop that appium service. Add these two lines on your code:

os.system("taskkill /F /IM node.exe")
os.system("taskkill /F /IM cmd.exe")