How do I remote control a GUI application?

Question

I can easily control a console based app with the input and output streams from Java's Runtime.exec() method. How would I control a GUI based application in the same manner. I have looked at the Robot class, but there is no way for me to control one application programmatically. Is there another Java library, or even another language's library that would allow me to spawn a GUI application and then be able to control that application?

Answer 1

If you mean Java GUIs, then there's WindowLicker, which is designed around testing, but should be just as good for driving .

Answer 2

There are many tools to do record and playback. Squish(frologic), RFT(IBM) are good examples. There are many open source tools as well.

Did you check Jemmy - https://jemmy.dev.java.net/. This provides API's to control the GUI program. You may expose some services in your program to call Jemmy APIs.