Espresso – Click by text in List view

The problem is, that you try to match the list view itself with the instanceOf(ListView.class) as argument for onData(). onData() requires a data matcher that matches the adapted data of the ListView, not the ListView itself, and also not the View that Adapter.getView() returns, but the actual data.

If you have something like this in your production code:

ListView listView = (ListView)findViewById(R.id.myListView);
ArrayAdapter<MyDataClass> adapter = getAdapterFromSomewhere();
listView.setAdapter(adapter);

Then the Matcher argument of Espresso.onData() should match the desired instance of MyDataClass.
So, something like this should work:

onData(hasToString(startsWith("ASDF"))).perform(click());

(You can use another Matcher using a method of org.hamcrest.Matchers)

In case you have multiple adapter views in your activity, you can call ViewMatchers.inAdapterView() with a view matcher that specifies the AdapterView like this:

onData(hasToString(startsWith("ASDF")))
    .inAdapterView(withId(R.id.myListView))
    .perform(click());