AccessibilityCache problem

[ihorlvukr]

During interaction with third parity component, I have an issue.
Component change itself regularly, and gets cached.
So Appium gives me old cached version of component.
The same does adb exec-out uiautomator dump

As I understand the reason is not in Appium, but in Android AccessibilityCache.java and AccessibilityInteractionClient.java
I actively search how to clear this cache manually.
I found such a code in your project file:

appium-uiautomator2-server/app/src/main/java/io/appium/uiautomator2/utils/AXWindowHelpers.java

/**
 * Clears the in-process Accessibility cache, removing any stale references. Because the
 * AccessibilityInteractionClient singleton stores copies of AccessibilityNodeInfo instances,
 * calls to public APIs such as `recycle` do not guarantee cached references get updated. See
 * the android.view.accessibility AIC and ANI source code for more information.
 */
private static void clearAccessibilityCache() {
    try {
        // This call invokes `AccessibilityInteractionClient.getInstance().clearCache();` method
        UiAutomatorBridge.getInstance().getUiAutomation().setServiceInfo(null);
    } catch (NullPointerException npe) {
        // it is fine
        // ignore
    } catch (Exception e) {
        Logger.warn("Failed to clear Accessibility Node cache", e);
    }
}

Please, help me to understand why it is there, and can I use it somehow to clear AccessibilityCache using appium-uiautomator2

Many thanks.

[KazuCocoa]

It is called as part of refreshAccessibilityCache. You can see where calls the api in the uia2: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aappium%2Fappium-uiautomator2-server%20refreshAccessibilityCache&type=code

[ihorlvukr]

I have found setCacheEnabled method in
Android\Sdk\sources\android-33\android\accessibilityservice\AccessibilityService.java
but have no idea how to patch appium-uiautomator2-server to use it

[mykola-mokhnach]

I've added mobile: resetAccessibilityCache execute method to the UIA2 driver recently that may help in the situation described above