jsjohnst/nexpect

spawn and control child processes in node.js with ease

#nexpect

nexpect is a node.js module for spawning child applications (such as ssh) and seamlessly controlling them using javascript callbacks. nexpect is based on the ideas of the expect library by Don Libes and the pexpect library by Noah Spurrier.

why

node.js has good built in control for spawning child processes. nexpect builds on these core methods and allows developers to easily pipe data to child processes and assert the expected response. nexpect also chains, so you can compose complex terminal interactions.

installation

installing npm (node package manager)

  curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

installing nexpect

  npm install nexpect

usage

  var nexpect = require('./lib/nexpect').nspawn;
  
  nexpect.spawn("echo hello")
         .expect("hello")
         .run(function(err) {
            if (!err) {
              console.log("hello was echoed");
            }
         });

  nexpect.spawn("ls -al /tmp/undefined")
         .expect("No such file or directory")
         .run(function(err) {
            if (!err) {
              console.log("checked that file doesn't exists");
            }
         });

  nexpect.spawn("node")
        .expect("Type '.help' for options.")
        .sendline("console.log('testing')")
        .expect("testing")
        .sendline("process.exit()")
        .run(function(err) {
          if (!err) {
            console.log("node process started, console logged, process exited");
          } else {
            console.log(err)
          }
        });

authors

Elijah Insua and Marak Squires