Python, adb and shell execution query

Question

I don't have a lot of familiarity with Python but I do with Ruby. So I will provide analogues for what I want to achieve

In Ruby I would

val = `adb devices`

to get the "raw output" of adb devices stored in val, and

val=system("adb devices")

to get the status code

I want to perform the same tasks in Python. I looked at

from subprocess import call
call(["adb devices"])

but that failed, I don't want to use os.system cause I want to get some proper error handling. how do i make call work and how do i obtain raw output from backticks in Python

Answer 1

Pass the command and arguments as separate elements of a list:

from subprocess import call
return_code = call(["adb", "devices"])

However, this sends the output to stdout and you can't capture it. Instead you can use subprocess.check_ouput():

from subprocess import check_output

adb_ouput = check_output(["adb", "devices"])
# stdout of adb in adb_output.

If the return code is non-zero an exception is raised. You should catch it to see what the return code is. No exception is raised for return code 0:

from subprocess import check_output, CalledProcessError

try:
    adb_ouput = check_output(["adb", "devices"])
except CalledProcessError as e:
    print e.returncode