How to run a node command from the UI.Vision RPA chrome extension

The anatomy of a basic UI Vision task looks like this:

{
  "Command": "XType",
  "Target": "Hello World${KEY_ENTER}",
  "Value": "",
  "Description": ""
},

It can be a very simple task such as typing some text in the before-selected input control. But it can also perform advanced sequences. These sequences can involve conditional structures, and system calls. It can even execute javascript in a sandboxed context.

The two most important parameters are Value and Target. But sometimes its usage is not very intuitive.

Luckily, the documentation is clear and accessible. As a quick link next to the command dropdown.

Let's call a node.js process sometime in our automation flow.

To do this, make sure you have the UI Vision extra X Modules installed. If you're running this on mac, make sure to also grant the necessary permissions.

The inconsistent usage of Value and Target made me spend some time figuring out how to split the command. I've found that this works:

{
  "Command": "XRun",
  "Target": "/My Path/.n/bin/node",
  "Value": "/My Path/automations/my_automation.js",
  "Description": ""
},

The Target is the binary we want to run, and the Value is the parameter we want to pass to it. In our case, a javascript file.

Another mention-worthy caveat: In the Chrome extension, you can't pass the Terminal as Target process due to security concerns.

If you use webpack aliases for your imports you need to let Jest know about them before you can test your code. You can do this in a jest configuration file - jest.config.js for instance:

module.exports = {
  moduleNameMapper: {
    //an import like: '@/interfaces/Foo.ts' 
    //becomes '[your-root]/src/interfaces/Foo.ts'
    '@/(.*)$': '<rootDir>/src/$1',
  },
  ...
};

If you want to learn how to configure webpack aliases you can read this post