node-copy-paste

A command line utility that allows read/write (i.e copy/paste) access to the system clipboard. It does this by wrapping pbcopy/pbpaste (for OSX), xclip (for Linux and OpenBSD), and clip (for Windows). Currently works with node.js v0.8+.

The API

When require("copy-paste") is executed, two global functions are added:

• copy(text[, callback]): asynchronously replaces the current contents of the clip board with text. Takes either a string, array, object, or readable stream. Returns the same value passed in. Optional callback will fire when the copy operation is complete.

• paste([callback]): if no callback is provided, paste synchronously returns the current contents of the system clip board. Otherwise, the contents of the system clip board are passed to the callback as the second parameter.

  Note: The synchronous version of paste is not always availabled. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding a synchronous version of child_process.exec that consistently works on all platforms, especially windows. An error message is shown if the synchronous version of paste is used on an unsupported platform. That said, the asyncchronous version of paste is always available.

• require("copy-paste").noConflict(): removes copy and paste from the global namespace. Returns an object with copy and paste as properties. Can be chained with silent.

• require("copy-paste").silent(): suppresses all print statements produced by this module, including ones that report errors. Returns an object with copy and paste as properties. Can be chained with noConflict.

Getting node-copy-paste

The easiest way to get node-copy-paste is with npm:

npm install -g copy-paste

Rarely is it a good idea to install modules globally, but node-copy-paste is immensely useful while doing work in the REPL or while debugging. It's nice having it around.

Alternatively you can clone this git repository:

git clone git://github.com/xavi-/node-copy-paste.git

Future plans

I'm hoping to add various fallbacks for instances when xclip or clip is not avaiable (see experimental-fallbacks branch). Also this library needs to be more thoroughly tested on windows.

Developed by

• Xavi Ramirez

License

This project is released under The MIT License.