`mozdevice` — Interact with Android devices¶

mozdevice provides a Python interface to the Android Debug Bridge (adb) for Android Devices.

mozdevice exports the following classes:

ADBProcess is a class which is used by ADBCommand to execute commands via subprocess.Popen.

ADBCommand is an internal only class which provides the basics of the interfaces for connecting to a device, and executing commands either on the host or device using ADBProcess.

ADBHost is a Python class used to execute commands which are not necessarily associated with a specific device. It is intended to be used directly.

ADBDevice is a Python class used to execute commands which will interact with a specific connected Android device.

ADBAndroid inherits directly from ADBDevice and is essentially a synonym for ADBDevice. It is included for backwards compatibility only and should not be used in new code.

ADBDeviceFactory is a Python function used to create instances of ADBDevice. ADBDeviceFactory is preferred over using ADBDevice to create new instances of ADBDevice since it will only create one instance of ADBDevice for each connected device.

mozdevice exports the following exceptions:

Exception -
|- ADBTimeoutError
|- ADBDeviceFactoryError
|- ADBError
   |- ADBProcessError
   |- ADBListDevicesError

ADBTimeoutError is a special exception that is not part of the ADBError class hierarchy. It is raised when a command has failed to complete within the specified timeout period. Since this typically is due to a failure in the usb connection to the device and is not recoverable, it is implemented separately from ADBError so that it will not be caught by normal except clause handling of expected error conditions and is considered to be treated as a fatal error.

ADBDeviceFactoryError is also a special exception that is not part of the ADBError class hierarchy. It is raised by ADBDeviceFactory when the state of the internal ADBDevices object is in an inconsistent state and is considered to be a fatal error.

ADBListDevicesError is an instance of ADBError which is raised only by the ADBHost.devices() method to signify that adb devices reports that the device state has no permissions and can not be contacted via adb.

ADBProcessError is an instance of ADBError which is raised when a process executed via ADBProcess has exited with a non-zero exit code. It is raised by the ADBCommand.command method and the methods that call it.

ADBError is a generic exception class to signify that some error condition has occured which may be handled depending on the semantics of the executing code.

Example:

from mozdevice import ADBHost, ADBDeviceFactory, ADBError

adbhost = ADBHost()
try:
    adbhost.kill_server()
    adbhost.start_server()
except ADBError as e:
    print('Unable to restart the adb server: {}'.format(str(e)))

device = ADBDeviceFactory()
try:
    sdcard_contents = device.ls('/sdcard/')  # List the contents of the sdcard on the device.
    print('sdcard contains {}'.format(' '.join(sdcard_contents))
except ADBError as e:
    print('Unable to list the sdcard: {}'.format(str(e)))

Android devices use a security model based upon user permissions much like that used in Linux upon which it is based. The adb shell executes commands on the device as the shell user whose access to the files and directories on the device are limited by the directory and file permissions set in the device’s file system.

Android apps run under their own user accounts and are restricted by the app’s requested permissions in terms of what commands and files and directories they may access.

Like Linux, Android supports a root user who has unrestricted access to the command and content stored on the device.

Most commercially released Android devices do not allow adb to run commands as the root user. Typically, only Android emulators running certain system images, devices which have AOSP debug or engineering Android builds or devices which have been rooted can run commands as the root user.

ADBDevice supports using both unrooted and rooted devices by laddering its capabilities depending on the specific circumstances where it is used.

ADBDevice uses a special location on the device, called the test_root, where it places content to be tested. This can include binary executables and libraries, configuration files and log files. Since the special location /data/local/tmp is usually accessible by the shell user, the test_root is located at /data/local/tmp/test_root by default. /data/local/tmp is used instead of the sdcard due to recent Scoped Storage restrictions on access to the sdcard in Android 10 and later.

If the device supports running adbd as root, or if the device has been rooted and supports the use of the su command to run commands as root, ADBDevice will default to running all shell commands under the root user and the test_root will remain set to /data/local/tmp/test_root unless changed.

If the device does not support running shell commands under the root user, and a debuggable app is set in ADBDevice property run_as_package, then ADBDevice will set the test_root to /data/data/<app-package-name>/test_root and will run shell commands as the app user when accessing content located in the app’s data directory. Content can be pushed to the app’s data directory or pulled from the app’s data directory by using the command run-as to access the app’s data.

If a device does not support running commands as root and a debuggable app is not being used, command line programs can still be executed by pushing them to the /data/local/tmp directory which is accessible to the shell user.

If for some reason, the device is not rooted and /data/local/tmp is not acccessible to the shell user, then ADBDevice will fail to initialize and will not be useable for that device.

NOTE: ADBFactory will clear the contents of the test_root when it first creates an instance of ADBDevice.

When the run_as_package property is set in an ADBDevice instance, it will clear the contents of the current test_root before changing the test_root to point to the new location /data/data/<app-package-name>/test_root which will then be cleared of any existing content.

class mozdevice.ADBAndroid(device=None, adb='adb', adb_host=None, adb_port=None, test_root=None, logger_name='adb', timeout=300, verbose=False, device_ready_retry_wait=20, device_ready_retry_attempts=3, use_root=True, share_test_root=True, run_as_package=None)¶

Bases: mozdevice.adb.ADBDevice

ADBAndroid functionality is now provided by ADBDevice. New callers should use ADBDevice.

BUILTINS = {'alias', 'bg', 'bind', 'break', 'builtin', 'caller', 'cd', 'command', 'compgen', 'complete', 'compopt', 'continue', 'declare', 'dirs', 'disown', 'echo', 'enable', 'eval', 'exec', 'exit', 'export', 'false', 'fc', 'fg', 'getopts', 'hash', 'help', 'history', 'jobs', 'kill', 'let', 'local', 'logout', 'mapfile', 'popd', 'printf', 'pushd', 'pwd', 'read', 'readonly', 'return', 'set', 'shift', 'shopt', 'source', 'suspend', 'test', 'times', 'trap', 'true', 'type', 'typeset', 'ulimit', 'umask', 'unalias', 'unset', 'wait'}¶

SOCKET_DIRECTION_FORWARD = 'forward'¶

SOCKET_DIRECTION_REVERSE = 'reverse'¶

batch_execute(commands, timeout=None, enable_run_as=False)¶

Writes commands to a temporary file then executes on the device.

Parameters

commands_list (list) – List of commands to be run by the shell.
timeout (int) – The maximum time in seconds for any spawned adb process to complete before throwing an ADBTimeoutError. This timeout is per adb call. The total time spent may exceed this value. If it is not specified, the value set in the ADBDevice constructor is used.
enable_run_as (bool) – Flag used to temporarily enable use of run-as to execute the command.

Raises

mozdevice — Interact with Android devices¶

`mozdevice` — Interact with Android devices¶