Introduction to KeyboardSimulator

CRAN

KeyboardSimulator is a package for R language that make users simulate keyboard event, cursor movement and mouse click with simple R function.

This package provide 6 functions which are developed in C++:

The supported keys are listed in keyboard_value.


FAQ

Does KeyboardSimulator support operating systems other than Windows?

No, KeyboardSimulator is built on top of the Windows API and is not compatible with other operating systems.

This package doesn’t work on my computer! How can I make it work?

Open a GitHub issue and let us know what version of Windows you are using and what keyboard and mouse hardware you have connected.


Package Setup

install.packages("KeyboardSimulator")
library(KeyboardSimulator)

or

if (!require("devtools")) install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ChiHangChen/KeyboardSimulator")
library(KeyboardSimulator)

Examples

Simulate keyboard event

keybd.press("Enter")
keybd.press("Alt+f4")
keybd.press("Alt", hold = TRUE)
keybd.press('Tab')
keybd.release('Alt')

Simulate mouse event

mouse.get_cursor()
# Return the x,y coordinate of screen
[1] 960 540
mouse.click()
mouse.click("right")
mouse.move(960, 540)
mouse.move(960, 540, duration=3)
mouse.click(button = "left", hold = TRUE)
mouse.move(960, 540)
mouse.release()

Developers

Dependencies

It is highly recommended that you use the RStudio IDE to develop this package. In addition to an R installation, you’ll also need to install Rtools and a TeX distribution. TeX Live is a comprehensive distribution that seems to work well.

Once you have cloned this repository, you’ll need to download the build package dependencies. These dependencies are managed with packrat and can be restored by running

if (!require(packrat)) install.packages("packrat")
packrat::on()
packrat::restore()

Documentation

The roxygen2 R package is used to manage KeyboardSimulator’s documentation. Do not edit any of the files that have a warning comment at the top about manually editing those files!

You can regenerate package documentation with the RStudio shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Enter, or by running

roxygen2::roxygenize()

The project is set up to do this whenever building and testing the package.


Other