RobotJS

Node.js GUI Automation. Control the mouse, keyboard, and read the screen.

This is a work in progress so the exported functions could change at any time before the first stable release (1.0.0).

Only tested on Mac OS X using Node.js v0.10.31.

node-gyp is only configured for Mac, but this project will support Windows and Linux when I have time to test.

Installing

npm install robotjs

Examples

Get the mouse location and move it.

var robot = require("robotjs");

//Get the mouse position, retuns an object with x and y. 
var mouse=robot.mouse.pos();
console.log("Mouse is at x:" + mouse.x + " y:" + mouse.y);

//Move the mouse down by 100 pixels.
robot.mouse.move(mouse.x,mouse.y+100);

//Left click!
robot.mouse.click();

Building

RobotJS uses node-gyp for building.

Install node-gyp using npm:

npm install -g node-gyp

Then confgure and build:

node-gyp configure
node-gyp build

Plans

• Control the mouse by changing the mouse position, left/right clicking, and dragging.
• Control the keyboard by pressing keys, holding keys down, and typing words.
• Read pixel color from the screen and capture the screen.
• Find image on screen, read pixels from image.
• Possibly include window management?

Progress

Module	Status	Notes
Mouse	80%	Can't specify mouse button.
Keyboard	50%	No toggle support.
Screen	5%	Screenshot, read pixel color, image search.
Window	1%	Manipulate external windows.

Story

I'm a huge fan of AutoHotkey, and I've used it for a very long time. AutoHotkey is great for automation and it can do a bunch of things that are very diffucult in other languages. For example, it's imagesearch and pixel related functions are hard to reproduce on Mac, espscially in scripting languages. These functions are great for automating apps that can't be automated like Netflix. This has never been a big deal since I've always used Windows at work, but for the past few years I've been using Mac exclusively.

I like AutoHotkey, but I like Node.js more. By developing RobotJS I get an AutoHotkey replacement on Mac (finally!), and I get to use my favorite language.

TLDR: There's nothing like AutoHotkey on Mac, so I'm making it.

Based on autopy.