automation of controls and windows on Linux and OS X with Ruby?

[Jarmo Pertman]

Hello!

What would be the best way to automate controls and windows on linux
and os x? In Windows there is a Windows API, which allows to locate
windows by their title/handle/class name whatever, to click on
buttons, edit fields and send keystrokes. What would be the best tools
to do these things on linux and on os x?

Maybe there's even some existing tools in Ruby that i'm not aware of
to do that or to wrap any of the tools? I noticed that for linux there
is a dogtail, but it is using Python.

Also, xautomator caught my eye, but i'm not sure how usable it will be
for finding windows themselves and then clicking buttons and so on.

In OS X there seems to be AppleScript.

Also, these tools should be easy to install and should be free.

In short, it would be great if there would be already something
written in Ruby to do that and if not, then i could use system calls
to accomplish something similar.

So if you have done or are aware of something similar then please let
me know!

Jarmo

 

[Quintus]

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Am 25.09.2010 15:10, schrieb Jarmo Pertman:

Hello!

What would be the best way to automate controls and windows on linux
and os x? In Windows there is a Windows API, which allows to locate
windows by their title/handle/class name whatever, to click on
buttons, edit fields and send keystrokes. What would be the best tools
to do these things on linux and on os x?

Maybe there's even some existing tools in Ruby that i'm not aware of
to do that or to wrap any of the tools? I noticed that for linux there
is a dogtail, but it is using Python.

Also, xautomator caught my eye, but i'm not sure how usable it will be
for finding windows themselves and then clicking buttons and so on.

In OS X there seems to be AppleScript.

Also, these tools should be easy to install and should be free.

In short, it would be great if there would be already something
written in Ruby to do that and if not, then i could use system calls
to accomplish something similar.

So if you have done or are aware of something similar then please let
me know!

Jarmo

I once wrote the gem "xdo" ( http://rubygems.org/gems/xdo ) which is a
wrapper around the xdotool command-line tool (
http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/ ). However, I haven't
updated xdo for a longer time now so it may not work correctly with a
recent xdotool version -- But I'm working on it. You can get a
development version from
http://github.com/Quintus/Automations/tree/xdo-dev if you're interested.
Download, decompress and type "rake gem" to make a gem from it.

Vale,
Marvin
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[Jarmo Pertman]

Thanks! I'll take a look at xdo and xdotool itself. By taking a quick
glimpse it seems that it's not possible to interact with fields or
buttons on the windows themselves like you can do with AutoIt.

Jarmo