WebdriverIO: How to run file-uploading AutoIt .exe script

Question

I am using WebdriverIO to run a file-uploading .exe created with AutoIt.

I am running the script inside a browser.execute command. The file needs to run from the local drive and execute wd in Chrome browser. Here is the code :

this.open("https://smallpdf.com/word-to-pdf");
this.SubmitClick("//div[@class='l0v3m7-3 hIetmU']");
this.BrowserSleep(2000);
scr.runAutoItScript('C:\\test\\desktopApp\\autoit', 'fileUpload.exe')


//scr have the child process:
const { execFile } = require('child_process').execFile;
module.exports = {
  runAutoItScript(pathToScript, scriptName) {
    console.info(`\n> Started execution of ${pathToScript} / ${scriptName} ...`);

    execFile(`${pathToScript}/${scriptName}`, (error, stdout, stderr) => {
      if (error) {
        throw error;
      } else {
        console.info(`\n> Finished execution of ${scriptName}! | Output: ${stdout}`);
      }
    });
  }
}

Answer 1

I remember doing something like this in the past and I used NodeJS's child_process.execFile command. The documentation is heavy on child_process, so read carefully.

You should end up with something along the lines of:

const execFile = require('child_process').execFile;

let runAutoItScript = function(pathToScript, scriptName) {
  console.info(`\n> Started execution of ${scriptName} ...`);

  execFile(`${pathToScript}/${scriptName}`, (error, stdout, stderr) => {
    if (error) {
      throw error;
    } else {
      // > do something with the script output <
      console.info(`\n> Finished execution of ${scriptName}! | Output: ${stdout}`);
    }
  });
}

runAutoItScript('/this/is/a/valid/path', 'AwesomeScript.exe');

Next step would be to minify it and make it run inside browser.execute call.

You can find a lot of child_process examples online, just leverage the resources available to run the simplest script. Develop from there.