Using Java Robot to type text strings

The Java Robot class is very useful for automating various tasks that normally require user interaction. However, it lacks a rather simple but useful feature - it cannot type a string of text, just a single key code. I had to implement this when I worked on one of my projects and to my surprise an extensive googling session showed that quite a lot of people are looking for such functionality.

The SmartRobot class below extends the standard Java Robot class adding to "type(String text)" and a few other useful methods:

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;

public class SmartRobot extends Robot {

 public SmartRobot() throws AWTException {
  super();
 }

 public void keyType(int keyCode) {
  keyPress(keyCode);
  delay(50);
  keyRelease(keyCode);
 }
 
 public void keyType(int keyCode, int keyCodeModifier) {
  keyPress(keyCodeModifier);
  keyPress(keyCode);
  delay(50);
  keyRelease(keyCode);
  keyRelease(keyCodeModifier);
 }

 
 public void type(String text) {
  String textUpper = text.toUpperCase();

  for (int i=0; i<text.length(); ++i) {
   typeChar(textUpper.charAt(i));
  }  
 }
 
 private void typeChar(char c) {
  boolean shift = true;
  int keyCode;
  
  switch (c) {
  case '~':
   keyCode = (int)'`';
   break;
  case '!':
   keyCode = (int)'1';
   break;
  case '@':
   keyCode = (int)'2';
   break;
  case '#':
   keyCode = (int)'3';
   break;
  case '$':
   keyCode = (int)'4';
   break;
  case '%':
   keyCode = (int)'5';
   break;
  case '^':
   keyCode = (int)'6';
   break;
  case '&':
   keyCode = (int)'7';
   break;
  case '*':
   keyCode = (int)'8';
   break;
  case '(':
   keyCode = (int)'9';
   break;
  case ')':
   keyCode = (int)'0';
   break;
  case ':':
   keyCode = (int)';';
   break;
  case '_':
   keyCode = (int)'-';
   break;
  case '+':
   keyCode = (int)'=';
   break;
  case '|':
   keyCode = (int)'\\';
   break;
//  case '"':

//   keyCode = (int)'\'';

//   break;

  case '?':
   keyCode = (int)'/';
   break;
  case '{':
   keyCode = (int)'[';
   break;
  case '}':
   keyCode = (int)']';
   break;
  case '<':
   keyCode = (int)',';
   break;
  case '>':
   keyCode = (int)'.';
   break;
  default:
   keyCode = (int)c;
   shift = false;
  }
  if (shift)
   keyType(keyCode, KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT);
  else
   keyType(keyCode);
 }
 
 private int charToKeyCode(char c) {
  switch (c) {
  case ':':
   return ';';
  }
  return (int)c;
 }
}

The code can be downloaded here