Question

I am trying to run commands on Windows via NodeJS child processes:

var terminal = require('child_process').spawn('cmd');

terminal.stdout.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log('stdout: ' + data);
});

terminal.stderr.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log('stderr: ' + data);
});

terminal.on('exit', function (code) {
    console.log('child process exited with code ' + code);
});

setTimeout(function() {
    terminal.stdin.write('echo %PATH%');
}, 2000);

When it calls ti.stdin.write, it writes it to the stdin descriptor, but how do I trigger cmd to react at this point? How do I send the “enter” key signal that you do when you are actually typing in command prompt? Currently I get no response from cmd.

Answer 1

Sending a newline \n will exectue the command. .end() will exit the shell.

I modified the example to work with bash as I’m on osx.

var terminal = require('child_process').spawn('bash');

terminal.stdout.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log('stdout: ' + data);
});

terminal.on('exit', function (code) {
    console.log('child process exited with code ' + code);
});

setTimeout(function() {
    console.log('Sending stdin to terminal');
    terminal.stdin.write('echo "Hello $USER. Your machine runs since:"\n');
    terminal.stdin.write('uptime\n');
    console.log('Ending terminal session');
    terminal.stdin.end();
}, 1000);

The output will be:

Sending stdin to terminal
Ending terminal session
stdout: Hello root. Your machine runs since:
stdout: 9:47  up 50 mins, 2 users, load averages: 1.75 1.58 1.42
child process exited with code 0