Is there a way to get current activity's layout and views via adb?

Question

For environment reasons I can only use adb commands.

Is there a way to get the current layout attributes like id, position, text etc ?

Similar to what uiautomatorviewer shows.

Answer 1

Use adb shell uiautomator dump command:

Usage: uiautomator <subcommand> [options]

Available subcommands:

help: displays help message

runtest: executes UI automation tests
    runtest <class spec> [options]
    <class spec>: <JARS> < -c <CLASSES> | -e class <CLASSES> >
      <JARS>: a list of jar files containing test classes and dependencies. If
        the path is relative, it's assumed to be under /data/local/tmp. Use
        absolute path if the file is elsewhere. Multiple files can be
        specified, separated by space.
      <CLASSES>: a list of test class names to run, separated by comma. To
        a single method, use TestClass#testMethod format. The -e or -c option
        may be repeated. This option is not required and if not provided then
        all the tests in provided jars will be run automatically.
    options:
      --nohup: trap SIG_HUP, so test won't terminate even if parent process
               is terminated, e.g. USB is disconnected.
      -e debug [true|false]: wait for debugger to connect before starting.
      -e runner [CLASS]: use specified test runner class instead. If
        unspecified, framework default runner will be used.
      -e <NAME> <VALUE>: other name-value pairs to be passed to test classes.
        May be repeated.
      -e outputFormat simple | -s: enabled less verbose JUnit style output.

dump: creates an XML dump of current UI hierarchy
    dump [--verbose][file]
      [--compressed]: dumps compressed layout information.
      [file]: the location where the dumped XML should be stored, default is
      /storage/emulated/legacy/window_dump.xml

events: prints out accessibility events until terminated

By default it dumps the views hierarchy to $EXTERNAL_STORAGE/window_dump.xml

adb shell uiautomator dump
UI hierchary dumped to: /sdcard/window_dump.xml

Usually you would want to pull that file to your PC for further processing which would be an extra step. But there is a neat trick which allows to combine dumping and pulling into a single command. Using /dev/tty as a dump destination would make a single command which would print the whole dump to the stdout:

adb exec-out uiautomator dump /dev/tty
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes' ?><hierarchy rotation="0"><node ...></node></hierarchy>UI hierchary dumped to: /dev/tty