bug: Find Element by Image fails randomly

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

We have a suite of tests for Android that use the find element by image, on static images, which can all be found, but sometimes it fails randomly with the bellow error.

NoSuchElementException: Message: An element could not be located on the page using the given search parameters. Stacktrace: NoSuchElementError: An element could not be located on the page using the given search parameters. at ImageElementFinder.findByImage (/Users/username/.appium/node_modules/@appium/images-plugin/lib/finder.js:230:13) at ImageElementPlugin._find (/Users/username/.appium/node_modules/@appium/images-plugin/lib/plugin.js:61:12) at ImageElementPlugin.findElement (/Users/username/.appium/node_modules/@appium/images-plugin/lib/plugin.js:45:12) at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/appium.js:722:18 at AppiumDriver.executeWrappedCommand (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/appium.js:762:16) at AppiumDriver.executeCommand (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/lib/appium.js:684:17) at asyncHandler (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/@appium/base-driver/lib/protocol/protocol.js:346:19)

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After getting the above error, subsequent runs of the same suite will get the bellow error.

WebDriverException: Message: An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command. Original error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘match’) Stacktrace: UnknownError: An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command. Original error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘match’) at getResponseForW3CError (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/@appium/base-driver/lib/protocol/errors.js:956:9) at asyncHandler (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/@appium/base-driver/lib/protocol/protocol.js:435:35)

This second error will always appear until the server is restarted and the images will be found again until the first error happens again.

Expected Behavior

The images are found or not consistently and the server is able to handle the exception without the needing a restart.

Minimal Reproducible Example

We are providing an png image into the bellow function, which will then be converted to base64.

def _find_by_image(self, img_path: str):
       driver = self._get_driver_instance()

        with open(img_path, 'rb') as i_file:
            b64_data = base64.b64encode(i_file.read()).decode('UTF-8')

        return driver.find_element(by=AppiumBy.IMAGE, value=b64_data)

Regarding steps is only needed to execute the find_by_image a few times.

Environment

• Operating system: MacOS/Windows
  • Appium CLI version (output of appium --version): 2.0.0-beta.46
  • Node.js version (output of node --version): v16.14.2
  • npm version (output of npm --version): 8.17.0
• Appium driver(s) and their version(s):
  • uiautomator2@2.10.2
• Appium plugin(s) and their version(s):
  • device-farm@2.0.0-beta.4 [installed (NPM)]
  • appium-dashboard@v1.0.0-beta.13 [installed (NPM)]
  • images@1.3.7 [installed (NPM)]
• Platform and version under test:
  • Android 12
• Real device or emulator/simulator:
  • Redmi Note 9T

Link to Appium Logs

https://gist.github.com/jorgoncalves/8a163bbcd77498cab0a02a9e4f3b520e

Futher Information

No response

[mykola-mokhnach]

I see.

2022-11-09 12:14:31:879 [AndroidUiautomator2Driver@87f9 (128a8d3e)] Encountered internal error running command: TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘match’) 2022-11-09 12:14:31:879 [AndroidUiautomator2Driver@87f9 (128a8d3e)] at condition (/Users/username/.appium/node_modules/@appium/images-plugin/lib/finder.js:205:25)

really looks like a bug in the plugin to me and should be checked first.

[mykola-mokhnach]

Closed because of no response. The patch is currently merged to master, but not published. The only way to try it is to run the server from source or wait until the next version is published