headless

node-headless

node-headless makes it easy to start and use Xvfb in node. headless is inspired by xvfb-run - it searches for a free X display number and starts Xvfb on that.

API

var headless = require('headless');
 
headless(function(err, childProcess, servernum) {
  // childProcess is a ChildProcess, as returned from child_process.spawn()
  console.log('Xvfb running on server number', servernum);
  console.log('Xvfb pid', childProcess.pid);
  console.log('err should be null', err);
});

headless also support an optional number to start searching from.

var headless = require('headless');
 
headless(200, function(err, childProcess, servernum) {
  // servernum will be at least 200
  console.log('Xvfb running on server number', servernum);
  console.log('Xvfb pid', childProcess.pid);
});

Options:

• display: optional display parameters (width, height & depth). If you want to specify display, width and height are required, but depth is optional and defaults to 16.
• args: an array of arbitrary additional Xvfb arguments
• stdio: set the stdio of the spawned Xvfb process(es). Set this to 'inherit' to see Xvfb's stdout and stderr for debugging purposes.

var headless = require('headless');
 
var options = {
  display: {width: 1024, height: 980, depth: 32},
  args: ['-extension', 'RANDR'],
  stdio: 'inherit'
};
 
headless(options, function(err, childProcess, servernum) {
  // childProcess is a ChildProcess, as returned from child_process.spawn()
  console.log('Xvfb running on server number', servernum);
  console.log('Xvfb pid', childProcess.pid);
  console.log('err should be null', err);
});

install

With npm, do:

npm install headless

If you're having problems with Xvfb-instances not getting killed correctly, and is running on a platform that the posix-module supports, install child-killer (npm install child-killer) and headless will automatically use it.

Licence

Copyright (c) 2014 David Björklund

This software is released under the MIT license:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.