Serial communication from JavaScript?

Question

Is it possible to communicate over a machine's serial port through JavaScript?

I have to write a short program that sends data to a microcontroller over the serial port that has a GUI and is cross-platform compatible, and I really don't want to use Java's Swing.

Answer 1

JavaScript itself doesn't have any built in functionality to allow you to access the serial port. However, various JavaScript engines (v8, rhino, etc) allow you to write your own custom native objects.

You might want to check out node.js, which is a JavaScript library for v8 that's focused on writing server-side code (rather than web browser client code). It seems that someone's already written a serialport package for that:

https://github.com/voodootikigod/node-serialport

Answer 2

This is an old question, but in case this helps anyone else, Chrome Apps have access to a serial API - http://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial.html - which might help.

It's Chrome specific (obviously..), but Chrome is available cross-platform so might answer the question.