RobotVim - Easy Vim Automation

RobotVim is a Ruby gem that allows you to invoke Vim from inside of Ruby programs. It was designed to allow Vim developers to TDD/BDD their Vim plugins and scripts.

To install RobotVim run

gem install robot-vim

or clone this reposity and run rake install

RobotVim is developed with Vim 7.3, Ruby 1.9.2, and bundler.

Create an instance that will use your user's default Vim and vimrc

robot = RobotVim::Runner.new()

Create an instance with a specific Vim

robot = RobotVim::Runner.new(:vim => "/bin/vim")

Create an instance with a specific vimrc

robot = RobotVim::Runner.new(:vimrc => "something/vimrc")

Commands are passed in as a string with one command per line.

The input file can be specified as a path to an existing input file, or as a string which RobotVim will turn into an short lived file backed buffer.

commands = <<-COMMANDS
  :s/old/new
  :normal! gg
  :call setline('.', "RobotVim")
  :call MyAwesomePluginFunction
COMMANDS


vim_response = robot.run(:input_file => "some/file.txt", :commands => commands)


input = <<-CONTENT
  This text will be used
  as the contents of my input file
CONTENT

vim_response = robot.run(:input_file => input, :commands => commands)
buffer_text = vim_response.body

The return value of RobotVim::Runner#run is a RobotVim::VimResponse instance with the following fields

• body: The contents of the last buffer that was active when your commands completed
• line_number: The line number the cursor was on when your commands completed
• column_number: The column number the cursor was on when your commands completed

Please submit pull requests or issues if there are additional values that you want to be able to assert against

Use your preferred Ruby testing library to make assertions about the VimResponse returned by RobotVim::Runner#run

Take a look at spec/integration_spec.rb for examples of asserting with Rspec

RobotVim is developed by Matt Margolis | @mrmargolis | matt@mattmargolis.net