How to automate the DDMS snapshot mechanism?

Question

Does Android DDMS provide APIs ? I need to automate the snapshot mechanism for the native heap. Or is there any post processing tool for analysis DDMS native heap snapshots.

Answer 1

@laalto's answer is not quite correct

From a shell you can do the following to get a heap dump for the application using adb.

Note: Replace 19000 with the process ID of your running application. The filepath must be a filepath which your application has write access to on the Android device.

Create a heap dump:
adb shell am dumpheap 19000 /sdcard/Documents/android.hprof
Pull the file to your machine:
adb pull /sdcard/Documents/android.hprof
Convert to a hprof file readable by an analyzer:
hprof-conv android.hprof mat.hprof

Tips: Get process ID of your application:

adb shell ps | grep com.sample.application | cut -c10-15

Get process ID and dump heap:

adb shell am dumpheap `adb shell ps | grep com.sample.application | cut -c10-15` /sdcard/Documents/android.hprof