Scripting an Ice Cream Delivery with the Android SDK
Today, a smartphone-connected taxi company called Uber is operating five ice cream trucks in Seattle. You click a button in the Uber app and select your location, and an ice cream truck comes to you. Or at least that’s what should happen. Even with today’s weather (read: periodic torrential rain), people are clamoring to get their ice cream due to the fact that it’s only available for one day… meaning almost nobody is actually able to get a spot in the queue. Uber’s Twitter feed is full of advice telling customers just keep hitting the button, but man, I have work to do. I can’t sit here and press the little ice cream icon all day. Something has got to give.
The Android SDK contains a tool called monkeyrunner. Monkeyrunner lets you simulate touch events, take screenshots, etc… and it does it through a very simple Python library. I decided to see if I could write a little script to keep pressing the ice cream button in Uber’s app, and it only took a few minutes.
from time import sleep
from com.android.monkeyrunner import MonkeyRunner, MonkeyDevice
# Attach to Android device
d = MonkeyRunner.waitForConnection()
# Take a screenshot of the "sorry, keep trying" screen for reference
raw_input("Get to the error screen, then hit enter.\n")
oldpic = d.takeSnapshot()
while True:
# Touch the ice cream button
d.touch(540, 200, MonkeyDevice.DOWN_AND_UP)
sleep(4)
newpic = d.takeSnapshot()
# If the screen looks like our old error
# screen (95%), hit OK and just keep going (in 10 seconds)
if newpic.sameAs(oldpic, .95):
d.touch(460, 700, MonkeyDevice.DOWN_AND_UP)
sleep(10)
# But if the screen has changed, stop running the loop.
else:
break
I still don’t have ice cream, but the script is running and working.