6 ms·

PhantomJS 2.0 is getting ready for release

46 points by Allstar 12y ago

josephmecham 12y ago
Excellent! I have used PhantomJS for web scraping but as that is always a gray area of legality. I'd love to hear any other major uses you've seen it used for. I always love it when I find that a tool I'm using can be used for other purposes.
- pothibo 12y ago
  I once wanted to do automated testing with it. But because PhantomJS used an old webkit version, I couldn't :( But that's one use case where I would love to use phantomJS or any other headless engine to test the frontend. I'm aware that for headless testing to work, there should be a headless browser of every major vendor. Maybe it's an utopia.
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    Yes, my team ran directly into the old webkit version issue as well. Does this 2.0 still use an old WebKit? Having trouble finding out... Edit: it appears to be WebKit 538.1, from May 2014. But this is based on a readme which is pretty old, so it could be outdated info
    - simlevesque 12y ago
      I have solved this problem by using SlimerJS as an alternative.
      - serve_yay 12y ago
        Yeah, unfortunately we can't install that one on our build box, I believe because it needs X11. (As the page says it is not "totally headless")
        simlevesque 12y ago
        You are mistaken. You can install SlimerJS on a box without X11. You must install Xvfb use it like this : xvfb-run slimerjs script.js If you use casperjs you can modify the executable (it's python) and change "'default_exec' : 'slimerjs'" into "'default_exec' : 'xvfb-run slimerjs'"
    - pothibo 12y ago
      It uses a new version of Webkit(That includes DOM Mutation Events IIRC). But I believe that they always ship with their own version of webkit, which will always be behind. For PhantomJS 2.0, I think they ship with a version of webkit that is > 6 months old.
      - warfangle 12y ago
        They don't ship with their own version of webkit; they use qtwebkit (or at least used to?).
  - jamespitts 12y ago
    I've been using jquerygo (which runs on phantomjs) to do automated UI testing. The familiar jquery selectors are convenient! Being able to use websockets in my automated testing has been something of a holy grail, so jquerygo and phantomjs have been hugely helpful. https://github.com/travist/jquery.go.js https://github.com/travist/jquery.go.js
- weego 12y ago
  Primarily scraping of comet/ajax updating sites of course, but also some interesting uses for testing - crawling a site taking screenshots and then comparing screenshots across releases looking for layout bugs was quite a fun thing. The same principle as https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith
- greensoap 12y ago
  I use it to let my linux-based custom digital picture frame automatically pull photos from my IOS photostream. This is insecure because it requires that my photos are temporarily public, but it gets the job done.
- CJefferson 12y ago
  I use it to print out HTML presentations. I did found some very annoying bugs in saving to PDF (I'll have to see if they have got fixed!), but this is the only (scriptable) way I know of saving each slide of a HTML presentation to PDF (which you need sometimes)
- yeldarb 12y ago
  We use it to generate screenshots to use as the images in our open graph tags.
- hedgehog 12y ago
  Baking SVGs into PNGs for attaching to e-mails. We used D3 to generate SVG charts for displaying analytics data in-browser and then use Phantom to generate PNG versions. Works well.
- veidr 12y ago
  I used PhantomJS to drive a system integration with a hostile legacy web application. By hostile I mean that the legacy system had no API, was implemented using obfuscated code, and resisted being driven by URLs. We needed to integrate with it to create documents, calendar appointments, etc. in the legacy system, based on stuff that was happening in the newer system we were building. We ended up using PhantomJS to implement a module that drove the legacy system via its HTML user interface -- pushing buttons, selecting meeting participants from the HTML select tags, submitting forms, etc. Although that sounds (and is!) hacky as hell, it worked flawlessly 100% of the time. PhantomJS was a gift from the gods.
kyledrake 12y ago
PhantomJS is amazing. We use it to take screenshots of web sites on Neocities: https://neocities.org/browse https://neocities.org/browse
- chedigitz 12y ago
  Same here! It's saved us a tremendous amount of time for screenshots, especially when dealing with different sized viewports. Happy to see CSS3 is supported in 2.0 :) A big thanks to PhantomJS devs!
edwinnathaniel 12y ago
Excellent news. We, AppNeta, use PhantomJS to perform Synthetic web-app monitoring http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/ http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/ While PhantomJS has some limitation here and there, it is the _only_ headless browser our there AFAIK. Disclaimer: I work for AppNeta (specifically for the AppView product).
mofle 12y ago
Happy to see this! We use PhantomJS in our CLI tool Pageres, but the fact that the bundled WebKit engine in PhantomJS 1.x is ancient has caused a lot of headake for us and our users. https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres
untog 12y ago
Great news! I use PhantomJS, and I'm going to use this Hacker News thread as a really thinly veiled attempt at advertising my startup! We use PhantomJS as a headless browser, sometimes taking screenshots. I know, crazy. Anyway: http://www.mystartup.com http://www.mystartup.com
freshyill 12y ago
The current release has no (very very limited?) flexbox support, making PhantomJS less and less useful for working with modern layouts. I'm very excited about this release.
Ronsenshi 12y ago
That's great. Couple of things that I had to battle with in the past should be fixed in 2.0, so - awesome news.
jwklemm 12y ago
Very nice! I've been using PhantomJS 2.0 for a while now at my automated browser testing startup: https://ghostinspector.com/ https://ghostinspector.com/ (It's been available to build from source for a couple months.) It has a few lingering bugs (for instance, some issues with file uploads), but overall, it's a nice improvement over 1.9.x. The JavaScript engine is much newer and the rendering is improved.
seanp2k2 12y ago
Changelog: https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb173fd7d97e3764e0c222/ChangeLog https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb...

46 points by Allstar 12y ago

Excellent! I have used PhantomJS for web scraping but as that is always a gray area of legality. I'd love to hear any other major uses you've seen it used for. I always love it when I find that a tool I'm using can be used for other purposes.

pothibo 12y ago
I once wanted to do automated testing with it. But because PhantomJS used an old webkit version, I couldn't :( But that's one use case where I would love to use phantomJS or any other headless engine to test the frontend. I'm aware that for headless testing to work, there should be a headless browser of every major vendor. Maybe it's an utopia.
- serve_yay 12y ago
  Yes, my team ran directly into the old webkit version issue as well. Does this 2.0 still use an old WebKit? Having trouble finding out... Edit: it appears to be WebKit 538.1, from May 2014. But this is based on a readme which is pretty old, so it could be outdated info
  - simlevesque 12y ago
    I have solved this problem by using SlimerJS as an alternative.
    - serve_yay 12y ago
      Yeah, unfortunately we can't install that one on our build box, I believe because it needs X11. (As the page says it is not "totally headless")
      - simlevesque 12y ago
        You are mistaken. You can install SlimerJS on a box without X11. You must install Xvfb use it like this : xvfb-run slimerjs script.js If you use casperjs you can modify the executable (it's python) and change "'default_exec' : 'slimerjs'" into "'default_exec' : 'xvfb-run slimerjs'"
  - pothibo 12y ago
    It uses a new version of Webkit(That includes DOM Mutation Events IIRC). But I believe that they always ship with their own version of webkit, which will always be behind. For PhantomJS 2.0, I think they ship with a version of webkit that is > 6 months old.
    - warfangle 12y ago
      They don't ship with their own version of webkit; they use qtwebkit (or at least used to?).
- jamespitts 12y ago
  I've been using jquerygo (which runs on phantomjs) to do automated UI testing. The familiar jquery selectors are convenient! Being able to use websockets in my automated testing has been something of a holy grail, so jquerygo and phantomjs have been hugely helpful. https://github.com/travist/jquery.go.js https://github.com/travist/jquery.go.js
weego 12y ago
Primarily scraping of comet/ajax updating sites of course, but also some interesting uses for testing - crawling a site taking screenshots and then comparing screenshots across releases looking for layout bugs was quite a fun thing. The same principle as https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith
greensoap 12y ago
I use it to let my linux-based custom digital picture frame automatically pull photos from my IOS photostream. This is insecure because it requires that my photos are temporarily public, but it gets the job done.
CJefferson 12y ago
I use it to print out HTML presentations. I did found some very annoying bugs in saving to PDF (I'll have to see if they have got fixed!), but this is the only (scriptable) way I know of saving each slide of a HTML presentation to PDF (which you need sometimes)
yeldarb 12y ago
We use it to generate screenshots to use as the images in our open graph tags.
hedgehog 12y ago
Baking SVGs into PNGs for attaching to e-mails. We used D3 to generate SVG charts for displaying analytics data in-browser and then use Phantom to generate PNG versions. Works well.
veidr 12y ago
I used PhantomJS to drive a system integration with a hostile legacy web application. By hostile I mean that the legacy system had no API, was implemented using obfuscated code, and resisted being driven by URLs. We needed to integrate with it to create documents, calendar appointments, etc. in the legacy system, based on stuff that was happening in the newer system we were building. We ended up using PhantomJS to implement a module that drove the legacy system via its HTML user interface -- pushing buttons, selecting meeting participants from the HTML select tags, submitting forms, etc. Although that sounds (and is!) hacky as hell, it worked flawlessly 100% of the time. PhantomJS was a gift from the gods.

kyledrake 12y ago

PhantomJS is amazing. We use it to take screenshots of web sites on Neocities: https://neocities.org/browse https://neocities.org/browse

chedigitz 12y ago
Same here! It's saved us a tremendous amount of time for screenshots, especially when dealing with different sized viewports. Happy to see CSS3 is supported in 2.0 :) A big thanks to PhantomJS devs!

edwinnathaniel 12y ago

Excellent news. We, AppNeta, use PhantomJS to perform Synthetic web-app monitoring http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/ http://www.appneta.com/products/appview/ While PhantomJS has some limitation here and there, it is the _only_ headless browser our there AFAIK. Disclaimer: I work for AppNeta (specifically for the AppView product).

mofle 12y ago

Happy to see this! We use PhantomJS in our CLI tool Pageres, but the fact that the bundled WebKit engine in PhantomJS 1.x is ancient has caused a lot of headake for us and our users. https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres https://github.com/sindresorhus/pageres

untog 12y ago

Great news! I use PhantomJS, and I'm going to use this Hacker News thread as a really thinly veiled attempt at advertising my startup! We use PhantomJS as a headless browser, sometimes taking screenshots. I know, crazy. Anyway: http://www.mystartup.com http://www.mystartup.com

freshyill 12y ago

The current release has no (very very limited?) flexbox support, making PhantomJS less and less useful for working with modern layouts. I'm very excited about this release.

Ronsenshi 12y ago

That's great. Couple of things that I had to battle with in the past should be fixed in 2.0, so - awesome news.

jwklemm 12y ago

Very nice! I've been using PhantomJS 2.0 for a while now at my automated browser testing startup: https://ghostinspector.com/ https://ghostinspector.com/ (It's been available to build from source for a couple months.) It has a few lingering bugs (for instance, some issues with file uploads), but overall, it's a nice improvement over 1.9.x. The JavaScript engine is much newer and the rendering is improved.

seanp2k2 12y ago

Changelog: https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb173fd7d97e3764e0c222/ChangeLog https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/0352ddb502be9cb53cdb...