I am just putting this out there for others to find, because I had such a difficult time locating this crucial tidbit of information: if you select the Android WebView context in your hybrid mobile application, you can run your DOM-based Selenium tests against it using appium.
I am tasked with creating UI automation for an angularJS-based application that we are deploying as a web application and as a mobile application using cordova/phonegap. I wrote my Selenium-based tests for the web deployment and then wanted to use the same tests for the Android mobile application using appium. When I launched my mobile application in the Android emulator and then used Android’s UIAutomator to view the UI objects, all I saw was the Android-based objects, no DOM-based objects–even when I selected the WebView context. My heart sunk because I thought I would have to write separate automation for the web deployment and the Android app. After quite a bit of Googling, though, I found the nugget of information above (I can’t find the source now). So, I’m able to write my tests against the web deployment using Selenium and then run them against the Android app using appium.