I found a faster and non-root way of getting the view hierarchy that also works fine in most Chrome versions (in case of webview-based apps), even in Chrome 80+, and it was ussing AccesibilityService.
So, i first created a service which extends AccessibilityService:
public class BasicAccessibilityService extends AccessibilityService {
private static BasicAccessibilityService instance;
public static BasicAccessibilityService getInstance(){
return instance;
}
@Override
protected void onServiceConnected() {
instance = this;
super.onServiceConnected();
}
@Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
return super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
}
@Override
public void onAccessibilityEvent(AccessibilityEvent event) {
}
@Override
public void onInterrupt() {
}
@Override
public void onDestroy() {
super.onDestroy();
}
@Override
public void onCreate() {
super.onCreate();
}
@Override
public AccessibilityNodeInfo getRootInActiveWindow() {
try {
return super.getRootInActiveWindow();
} catch (Throwable ignored) {
returenter code heren null;
}
}
}
In Manifest:
<service
android:name="BasicAccessibilityService"
android:permission="android.permission.BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.accessibilityservice.AccessibilityService"
/>
</intent-filter>
<meta-data
android:name="android.accessibilityservice"
android:resource="@xml/service_config" />
</service>
In service_config.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<accessibility-service
xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:description="@string/accessibility_service_description"
android:accessibilityEventTypes="typeAllMask"
android:accessibilityFlags="flagReportViewIds|flagDefault|flagRequestFilterKeyEvents|flagRetrieveInteractiveWindows|flagEnableAccessibilityVolume"
android:canRetrieveWindowContent="true"
android:canRequestTouchExplorationMode="true"
android:accessibilityFeedbackType="feedbackGeneric"
android:canPerformGestures="true"
android:canRequestFilterKeyEvents="true"
android:notificationTimeout="0"
/>
Now the Accessibility Service is set up, and can be called whenever we want to get the view hierarchy. Remember that for it to work the app must have the accessibility permission granted. When the permission is granted the onServiceConnected method is automatically called, so we can call our service from it instance and get the views like:
BasicAccessibilityService.getInstance().getRootInActiveWindow()
This will return an AccessibilityNodeInfo which contains the current views information.
If you need to get the view hierarchy as an XML, you can use the AccessibilityNodeInfoDumper class from the uiautomator source code, which can be found here:
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/uiautomator/+/5fe6e7f321f02b08224fad72374ed041f459b411/core/com/android/uiautomator/core/AccessibilityNodeInfoDumper.java
Also you will have to add to your code the AccessibilityNodeInfoHelper found in here:
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/uiautomator/+/5fe6e7f321f02b08224fad72374ed041f459b411/core/com/android/uiautomator/core/AccessibilityNodeInfoHelper.java
When i implemented the above code to parse the AccessibilityNodeInfo to XML, i got almost the same problem i had before when getting the views with uiautomator dump. I found that the problem was in the isVisibleToUser method within dumpNodeRec in the AccessibilityNodeInfoDumper class.
For some reason, with some apps the isVisibleToUser method returns false with views that are visible inside webview-based application, and this behaviour changes depending on Chrome or System Web View version. So a possible solution is to not use that method and obtain all views, even those who are "invisible", or another option is to make your own method to determine if some view is visible or not.
For me was enought commenting the line that use the isVisibleToUser method. Hope this helps anyone who needs to do something similar.
