How to access the clipboard on android device

Question

My initial issue is being able to click a "PASTE" bubble that pops up when the a click is being held on a text field. Currently I have not found a way to get that action to happen using uiautomator script/code. So I started looking at directly accessing the clipboard. Now I am having issues accessing the clipboard on the android device. We are not using an app (apk), but are pushing a jar to the device and then using adb runtest to run the classes. So no activities are being started. I am guessing that is were all my issues are coming from. I have created a class file that I call trying to access the clipboard. But am currently getting this error message "java.lang.IllegalStateException: System services not available to Activities before onCreate()". I am new to android and uiautomator. Where/how do I add onCreate() to this code. I know the process we are using is odd at best. Any help at either getting the "PASTE" bubble clicked using uiautomator or getting the class to work would be appreciated. I tried the onCreate() in a few areas, as you can see, but no luck so far.

Here is my class so far:

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.*;
import android.os.AsyncTask;


public class MyClipBoard extends Activity {
    public String clip;


    MyClipBoard() {
        super.onCreate(null);
    }

    public void getClipBoard(){
       new GetClipBoard().execute();
    }

   private class GetClipBoard extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {
        private String pMyClip;
        @Override
        protected String doInBackground(Void...params) {
            try {
                onCreate(null);
                // ClipboardManager p = params[0];
                String pasteData = "";
                ClipboardManager myClipBoard = (ClipboardManager) getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
                ClipData.Item myClip = myClipBoard.getPrimaryClip().getItemAt(0);
                CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Data from  ClipBoard:", myClip.toString());
                CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Number of Items:", String.valueOf(myClipBoard.getPrimaryClip().getItemCount()));
                pMyClip = myClip.toString();
            }catch (Exception e){
                CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("ERROR",e.toString());
            }


            // Gets the clipboard as text.
            return pMyClip;

        }

        @Override
        protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
           clip =  result;
            CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Data from PostExecute:",  result);
        }

    }
}

---------Edited added class-------------------
public class MiApp extends Application {
public MiClipBoard newBoard;
private static Context appContext;

MiApp(){
    this.onCreate();
    Looper.prepare();
    newBoard =  new MiClipBoard();
}

public MiClipBoard appClipBoard(){
    return newBoard;
}

@Override
public void onCreate(){
    super.onCreate();
 }

public static Context getContext(){
    return appContext.getApplicationContext();
}

}

public class MiClipBoard extends Activity {
private  ClipboardManager clipboard;

MiClipBoard(){
    Context context = MiApp.getContext();
    clipboard = (ClipboardManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
}

public void writeToClipBoard(String clipText){

    try {
        ClipData clip = ClipData.newPlainText("simple text", "Hello, World!");
        clipboard.setPrimaryClip(clip);
        CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Writing to ClipBoard", "Hello World");
    } catch (Exception e){
        CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Write Error", e.toString());
    }
}


public void readClipBoard(){
    String pasteData = "";

    try {
        ClipData.Item item = clipboard.getPrimaryClip().getItemAt(0);
        pasteData = item.getText().toString();
        CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("From ClipBoard", pasteData);
    } catch (Exception e){
        CreateDeviceInfoFile.createInfoFile("Read Error", e.toString());
    }
}

}

Answer 1

Android system only allow us to activate one Activity at a time, and the others are in onPause() state. Starting an activity should have a layout.xml, and must call startActivity(Intent).

From the logcat:

"java.lang.IllegalStateException: System services not available to Activities before onCreate()".

We can know that getSystemService() only available after super.onCreate(Bundle), which triggers the activity to be created.

A good practice to call getSystemService() in non-activity class is by passing Context parameter to GetClipBoard's constructor and make it as public:

public class GetClipBoard extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> {

    private Context context;

    public GetClipBoard(Context context){
    this.context = context;
    }

    private String pMyClip;
    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(Void...params) {
        try {
            // ClipboardManager p = params[0];
            String pasteData = "";
            ClipboardManager myClipBoard = (ClipboardManager) context.getSystemService(Context.CLIPBOARD_SERVICE);
            ...
        }catch (Exception e){
        ...
        }
        // Gets the clipboard as text.
        return pMyClip;
    }
...
}

So once you executing AsyncTask, call the class from Android components that has Context, e.g. Activity, Service, BroadcastReceiver, etc.

new GetClipBoard(this).execute(); // 'this' > context

Answer 2

I believe that is my issue, currently I don't think I have a component that has Context. This is the class I am making the call from (part of it) and the first class that is being called by adb runtest.

  public class SetupApp  extends UiAutomatorTestCase {


    public void testAppSetup() throws UiObjectNotFoundException, RemoteException
    { 

         //other code here

         MyClipBoard myBoard = new MyClipBoard();
         myBoard.getClipBoard();