File download permission for appium chrome borwser

Question

I am implementing an appium test on remote android driver, with chrome browser for loading urls. Some of the Urls are pdfs, and chrome asks to store those files. and appears that chrome doesnt have access to filesystem to store those files, which results in a dialog like below.

Please help me pass that dialog without any manual inputs.

Upon clicking continue, it will load actual permissions dialog from Android.

Here is my code initialize appium capabilities

DesiredCapabilities caps = DesiredCapabilities.android();
    caps.setCapability("appiumVersion", "1.9.1");
    caps.setCapability("deviceName","Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus HD GoogleAPI Emulator");
    caps.setCapability("deviceOrientation", "portrait");
    caps.setCapability("browserName", "Chrome");
    caps.setCapability("platformVersion", "8.1");
    caps.setCapability("platformName","Android");
    caps.setCapability("autoAcceptAlerts", true);
    caps.setCapability("autoGrantPermissions", true);
    caps.setCapability("chromedriverArgs", "--allow-file-access-from-files");
    caps.setCapability("maxDuration", 10000);

and this is the snippet I use to load a Url

        driver.navigate().to("http://kmmc.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/lesson2.pdf");

autoGrantPermission also doesnt work in this case because chrome is already installed. Appium team has already rejected this issue - https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/10008

Please help!

Go to device setting>App>Chrome>Permission and allow storage permission. This should work. — Suban Dhyako, Apr 12 '19 at 13:55
There is no physical device. I create a device on the fly using saucelabs service — Anand Vaidya, Apr 12 '19 at 13:56
Assuming you're paying SauceLabs for this service, they should be able to provide you the answer. I'm sure it's not the first time a customer has needed to do this. A quick search of their docs leads me to believe you need to be using a real device. I've not used S-Labs, but I'm assuming you can choose between real or simulated cloud devices when setting up. — Mike Collins, Apr 12 '19 at 19:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 13 '19 at 13:17

Indeed I had very hard time finding out the solution, but eventually I found a workaround.

The best workaround would have been reinstalling the chrome package. I tried that, but I could not start chrome after reinstalling it, as I had no access to shell, and chromedriver complained. So I left that track.
I tried getting hold of adb command or mobile:changePermissions but for that you need to use server flag --relaxed-security while starting the server, and saucelabs doesnt provide any handy interface to start the server with this flag.

The last resort, I found a solution here - https://stackoverflow.com/a/51241899/4675277 . But just that was not sufficient, because it helped me fix chrome alert, but later on it popped up with another alert with allow and deny, for which another solution in the same question helped me. So this is the code I eventually used -

driver.navigate().to("http://kmmc.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/lesson2.pdf");
    String webContext = ((AndroidDriver)driver).getContext();
    Set<String> contexts = ((AndroidDriver)driver).getContextHandles();
    for (String context: contexts){
        if (context.contains("NATIVE_APP")){
            ((AndroidDriver)driver).context(context);
            break;
        }
    }
    driver.findElement(By.id("android:id/button1")).click();
    contexts = ((AndroidDriver)driver).getContextHandles();
    for (String context: contexts){
        if (context.contains("NATIVE_APP")){
            ((AndroidDriver)driver).context(context);
            break;
        }
    }
    driver.findElement(By.id("com.android.packageinstaller:id/permission_allow_button")).click();
    ((AndroidDriver)driver).context(webContext);

This helps allow all permissions required.

File download permission for appium chrome borwser

1 Answers1