Send Data Back to the Script Which Started the Activity via Adb Shell Am Start

Send data back to the script which started the activity via adb shell am start

If the data that you want to send back to your automation script could be serialized into a string less than 4k long - using logcat is a natural choice.
Just make your activity to print the data to the log with Log.i("UNIQUE_TAG", the_data_string_you_want_to_send_back_to_your_script); and then use the following commands in your automation script to capture the output:

# clear the logcat buffer
adb logcat -c

# start your activity
adb shell am start <INTENT>

# this line will block until a string with "UNIQUE_TAG" tag and "Info" priority
# is printed to the main log
adb shell 'logcat -b main -v raw -s UNIQUE_TAG:I | (read -n 1 && kill -2 $((BASHPID-1)))'

# now you can capture the data and process it
DATA=$(adb logcat -d -b main -v raw -s UNIQUE_TAG:I)

In more recent Android versions (7.0+) where logcat properly supports -m <count>, -t <time> and -T <time> parameters you can use this much simpler version without having to clear the log with logcat -c first:

# instead of clearing the log just get the current timestamp
TS=$(adb shell 'echo $EPOCHREALTIME; log ""')

# start your activity
adb shell am start <INTENT>

# this command will return immediately if the data has been printed already or block if not
DATA=$(adb shell "logcat -b main -T $TS -m 1 -v raw -s UNIQUE_TAG:I")

Is it possible to start activity through adb shell?

Launch adb shell and enter the command as follows

am start -n yourpackagename/.activityname

Use android adb shell to return one activity

you might want to try:

adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_BACK

cf. KEYCODE_BACK event

How to start an application using Android ADB tools

adb shell
am start -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName

Or you can use this directly:

adb shell am start -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName

You can also specify actions to be filter by your intent-filters:

am start -a com.example.ACTION_NAME -n com.package.name/com.package.name.ActivityName 

Get result value from intent in terminal

You can either implement a method returning a value in your service which you will call with service call command or you can print the value into the log and then parse the logcat output for the result.

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