Has anyone used Appium/WinAppDriver for automating desktop applications. - desktop

Question

I am looking for automating a windows application,and researching on what tools to be used. I have come across Appium/WinAppDriver, but not sure if it has a good usage anywhere so far....Appreciate suggestions on this.

Answer 1

I'm currently using the WinAppDriver to automate a WPF program. It's very similar to Selenium, if you have any experience with that then I'd advise using the WinAppDriver over something like White. You also get to use the Selenium WebDriverWait which was a massive bonus.
There is also a tool known as 'Inspect' that comes with the Windows SDK that allows you to inspect a windows application similar to the web-browser dev tools.
You simply initiate a driver (similar to Selenium) however you also need to start the WinApp process.
C# example:
protected WindowsDriver<WindowsElement> GetWindowsDriver()
{
var appCapabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
appCapabilities.SetCapability("app",
PathHelper.GetClientInstallPath() + "APPLICATION.exe");
appCapabilities.SetCapability("deviceName", "WindowsPC");
if (!IsWinAppDriverProcesssRunning())
{
StartWinAppProcessRunning();
}
var driver = new WindowsDriver<WindowsElement>(new Uri("http://127.0.0.1:4723"), appCapabilities);
driver.Manage().Timeouts().ImplicitWait = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5);
return driver;
}
private static bool IsWinAppDriverProcesssRunning()
{
const string processName = "WinAppDriver";
var existingProcesses = Process.GetProcessesByName(processName);
return existingProcesses.Any();
}
private static void StartWinAppProcessRunning()
{
const string winAppDirectory = #"C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Application Driver";
var winAppProcess =
new Process
{
StartInfo =
{
FileName = Path.Combine(winAppDirectory, "WinAppDriver.exe"),
WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden,
WorkingDirectory = winAppDirectory
}
};
winAppProcess.Start();
}