Emulate a human's mouse-movements using this JavaScript-based virtual pointer; the correct events will be executed in JavaScript, as if a real human was interacting on the page in a desktop or mobile browser (has support for touch events in mobile browser JavaScript implementations)
virtualpointer.move_mouse_to_element(element, length_of_mouse_movement);
virtualpointer.click_element(element);
virtualpointer.move_to_element_and_click(element, length_of_mouse_movement);
virtualpointer.run_serialized_events(array_of_events);
virtualpointer.tap_element(element); // mobile tap
virtualpointer.double_tap_element(element); // mobile double tap
virtualpointer.flick_to_element(element, length_of_flick_movement); // drag on screen to scroll to element (mobile)
array_of_events must be a serialized JSON array of events, with the following properties for each event:
- type: type of event (e.g. mousemove, mousedown, etc.)
- pageX: pageX value for the mouse event
- pageY: pageY value for the mouse event
- screenX: screenX value for the mouse event
- screenY: screenY value for the mouse event
- timestamp: timestamp of event; this will be used to calculate the time between one event and the next, so no need for the timestamps to start from zero
- element: DOM element on which to fire mouse event (this is optional; if the element is not specified, event will be fired on document.body instead)
duration for all mouse movements is expressed in milliseconds, e.g. virtualpointer.move_to_element_and_click(element, 5000) will take 5 seconds to complete the mouse movements
open up example.html and open up the JavaScript console in your web-browser; you should have a log of events that have been fired programmatically.... you can then run any of the commands above
example commands:
virtualpointer.move_mouse_to_element($("#firstHeading"), 2500);
virtualpointer.flick_to_element($("#footer"), 2500);
virtualpointer.move_to_element_and_click( $("#pt-createaccount a"), 1000);
note: this last command will redirect you to the create account page on wikipedia since the command moves the mouse to the create account link and then clicks on it
None; uses native JavaScript
You can't run this inside a headless browser that depends on the jsdom.js library, such as Zombie.js, because jsdom.js doesn't have any notion of page layout (or dimensions of elements on the page) and does not implement getBoundingClientRect, etc.
You can't run touch events inside browsers that do not support touch events; the fallback is to just use mousedown / mousemove / mouseup for these cases