CasperJS is a fantastic command-line utility offering a wide JavaScript API to script and test any web page. Unlike Selenium, CasperJS does not automate a locally installed web browser; it behaves as an actual independent web browser.
To automate a locally installed web browser, CasperJS uses PhantomJS, which is a headless WebKit engine. Well, "headless WebKit engine" might sound like quite a barbaric term, but just imagine this as a WebKit engine (the famous web engine of Chrome and Safari) without a graphical user interface.
So it is basically a web browser. It can load web pages, apply their CSS, run their JavaScript, interact with their content, and so on; but when we launch it from a command line, we do not see anything on the screen.
Instead of a standard graphical user interface, PhantomJS offers a JavaScript API so we can control what the browser is doing. By running its own web engine instead of automating an external web browser, PhantomJS is much faster and lighter than Selenium.
Unfortunately, the PhantomJS JavaScript API is very low level. So by writing a simple interaction scenario rapidly, you could end up with quite a heavy and long script code.
This is precisely where CasperJS makes its entrance. It comes with two precious assets. Firstly, with a large, high-level API to perform actions such as clicking links, filling forms, and finding elements; and secondly, with the ability to execute those actions sequentially without requiring an endless cascade of JavaScript callbacks.
Thanks to this, our CasperJS scripts will be just as concise and readable as we wish, which is priceless when dealing with testing.
CasperJS was created by Nicolas Perriault in 2011, and he is still actively maintaining it. All the CasperJS users are very grateful for it. Thank you Nicolas!
Installing CasperJS (Simple) explains how to properly install PhantomJS and CasperJS plus their system dependencies needed on our machine, step by step.
Getting started with CasperJS (Simple) covers how to write basic CasperJS tests. Starting with simple scripts, we will progressively get familiar with the CasperJS approach, discover what kind of assertions can be performed with CasperJS, learn how to establish the proper timing to get an accurate test, and how to record a web session as a CasperJS script.
Writing advanced tests (Intermediate) details how to simulate rich web interactions using CasperJS in order to achieve more complex testing, such as handling files, managing authentication, or simulating keyboard and mouse events efficiently.
Best practices (Intermediate) focuses on making our tests more accurate and robust and explains how to run them using continuous integration (CI) tools, such as Jenkins or Travis CI.
Beyond testing (Advanced) discusses other interesting CasperJS usages such as web scripting and automated screenshot or server-side printing.
To execute the examples contained in this book, you will need a computer compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, with sufficient rights to be able to install new software.
This book assumes that you are familiar with web development and have a good knowledge of JavaScript.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can print log messages using the log method."
A block of code is set as follows:
casper.start('http://en.wikipedia.org/', function() {
this.echo(this.getCurrentUrl());
});When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
casper.start('http://en.wikipedia.org/', function() {
this.echo(this.getCurrentUrl());
});Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
~ casperjs test.js
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "It shows a Click me button, and if we click on it, its label is changed to Done."
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