That's why I said emulate. V8 (Node) with appropriate modules can emulate the browser - both parse the DOM, and then run scripts on that DOM. PHP/Perl/etc. can'

That's why I said emulate. V8 (Node) with appropriate modules can emulate the browser - both parse the DOM, and then run scripts on that DOM. PHP/Perl/etc. can't do that. Java could do that with Rhino I assume, but I'd say V8 is much closer. I'm also not saying anything about emulating exactly Chrome. I wish I had time to dig up that module for Node now, but I don't (I don't remember the name).