james-browser-launcher
Detect the browser versions available on your system and launch them in an isolated profile for automated testing purposes.
You can launch browsers headlessly (using Xvfb or with PhantomJS) and set the proxy configuration on the fly.
At the beginning of time, there was substack/browser-launcher,
and all was well with the world. However, life happened, and the project became unmaintained.
Out of the ashes, a leader emerged, and promised the citizens of npm
that browser-launcher
would become great again,
but under a new banner: browser-launcher2
.
The world was once again prosperous, until we were eventually notified that
the king had forsaken us (which
happens, it's open source, and benderjs
did a lot for the community, which is awesome!)
Anyways, due to the project's dependence on browser-launcher2
, james-proxy
forked the project to make some
much-needed updates and fix some problems.
Differences from browser-launcher
- contains fixes and pull requests for unresolved issues reported in original repository
-
launcher.browsers
is an array of local browsers only, not an object as it was before -
launch
callback returns anInstance
instead of a child process, see API section for more details - uses win-detect-browsers for browser detection on Windows
- more browsers supported
Differences from browser-launcher2
- This repository is not dead
- See
CHANGELOG.md
Supported browsers
The goal for this module is to support all major browsers on every desktop platform.
At the moment, james-browser-launcher
supports following browsers on Windows, Unix and OS X:
- Chrome
- Chromium
- Firefox
- IE (Windows only)
- Opera
- Safari
- PhantomJS
Install
npm install @james-proxy/james-browser-launcher
Example
Browser launch
var launcher = require( '@james-proxy/james-browser-launcher' );
launcher( function( err, launch ) {
if ( err ) {
return console.error( err );
}
launch( 'http://cksource.com/', 'chrome', function( err, instance ) {
if ( err ) {
return console.error( err );
}
console.log( 'Instance started with PID:', instance.pid );
instance.on( 'stop', function( code ) {
console.log( 'Instance stopped with exit code:', code );
} );
} );
} );
Outputs:
$ node example/launch.js
Instance started with PID: 12345
Instance stopped with exit code: 0
Browser launch with options
var launcher = require( '@james-proxy/james-browser-launcher' );
launcher( function( err, launch ) {
// ...
launch(
'http://cksource.com/',
{
browser: 'chrome',
noProxy: [ '127.0.0.1', 'localhost' ],
options: [
'--disable-web-security',
'--disable-extensions'
]
},
function( err, instance ) {
// ...
}
);
} );
Browser detection
var launcher = require( '../' );
launcher.detect( function( available ) {
console.log( 'Available browsers:' );
console.dir( available );
} );
Outputs:
$ node example/detect.js
Available browsers:
[ { name: 'chrome',
version: '36.0.1985.125',
type: 'chrome',
command: 'google-chrome' },
{ name: 'chromium',
version: '36.0.1985.125',
type: 'chrome',
command: 'chromium-browser' },
{ name: 'firefox',
version: '31.0',
type: 'firefox',
command: 'firefox' },
{ name: 'phantomjs',
version: '1.9.7',
type: 'phantom',
command: 'phantomjs' },
{ name: 'opera',
version: '12.16',
type: 'opera',
command: 'opera' } ]
Detaching the launched browser process from your script
If you want the opened browser to remain open after killing your script, first, you need to set options.detached
to true
(see the API). By default, killing your script will kill the opened browsers.
Then, if you want your script to immediately return control to the shell, you may additionally call unref
on the instance
object in the callback:
var launcher = require('@james-proxy/james-browser-launcher');
launcher( function (err, launch) {
launch( 'http://example.org/', {
browser: 'chrome',
detached: true
}, function( err, instance ) {
if ( err ) {
return console.error( err );
}
instance.process.unref();
instance.process.stdin.unref();
instance.process.stdout.unref();
instance.process.stderr.unref();
} );
});
API
var launcher = require('@james-proxy/james-browser-launcher');
launcher([configPath], callback)
Detect available browsers and pass launch
function to the callback.
Parameters:
-
String
configPath
- path to a browser configuration file (Optional) -
Function
callback(err, launch)
- function called withlaunch
function and errors (if any)
launch(uri, options, callback)
Open given URI in a browser and return an instance of it.
Parameters:
-
String
uri
- URI to open in a newly started browser -
Object|String
options
- configuration options or name of a browser to launch -
String
options.browser
- name of a browser to launch -
String
options.version
- version of a browser to launch, if none was given, the highest available version will be launched -
String
options.proxy
- URI of the proxy server -
Array
options.options
- additional command line options -
Boolean
options.skipDefaults
- don't supply any default options to browser -
Boolean
options.detached
- if true, then killing your script will not kill the opened browser -
Array|String
options.noProxy
- An array of strings, containing proxy routes to skip over -
Boolean
options.headless
- run a browser in a headless mode (only if Xvfb available) -
String
options.profile
- path to a directory to use for the browser profile, overriding the default -
Function
callback(err, instance)
- function fired when started a browserinstance
or an error occurred
launch.browsers
This property contains an array of all known and available browsers.
instance
Browser instance object.
Properties:
-
String
command
- command used to start the instance -
Array
args
- array of command line arguments used while starting the instance -
String
image
- instance's image name -
String
processName
- instance's process name -
Object
process
- reference to instance's process started with Node'schild_process.spawn
API -
Number
pid
- instance's process PID -
Stream
stdout
- instance's process STDOUT stream -
Stream
stderr
- instance's process STDERR stream
Events:
-
stop
- fired when instance stops
Methods:
-
stop(callback)
- stop the instance and fire the callback once stopped
launcher.detect(callback)
Detects all browsers available.
Parameters:
-
Function
callback(available)
- function called with array of all recognized browsers
Each browser contains following properties:
-
name
- name of a browser -
version
- browser's version -
type
- type of a browser i.e. browser's family -
command
- command used to launch a browser
launcher.update([configFile], callback)
Updates the browsers cache file (~/.config/james-browser-launcher/config.json
is no configFile
was given) and creates new profiles for found browsers.
Parameters:
-
String
configFile
- path to the configuration file Optional -
Function
callback(err, browsers)
- function called with found browsers and errors (if any)
Known Issues
- IE8: after several starts and stops, if you manually open IE it will come up with a pop-up asking if we want to restore tabs (#21)
- Chrome @ OSX: it's not possible to launch multiple instances of Chrome at once
License
MIT