Book Image

Getting Started with PhantomJS

By : Aries beltran
Book Image

Getting Started with PhantomJS

By: Aries beltran

Overview of this book

PhantomJS is a headless WebKit browser with JavaScript API that allows you to create new ways to automate web testing. PhantomJS is currently being used by a large number of users to help them integrate headless web testing into their development processes. It also gives you developers a new framework to create web-based applications, from simple web manipulation to performance measurement and monitoring.A step step-by by-step guide that will help you develop new tools for solving web and testing problems in an effective and quick way. The book will teach you how to use and maximize PhantomJS to develop new tools for web scrapping, web performance measurement and monitoring, and headless web testing. This book will help you understand PhantomJS’ scripting API capabilities and strengths.This book starts by looking at PhantomJS’ JavaScript API, features, and basic execution of scripts. Throughout the book, you will learn details to help you write scripts to manipulate web documents and fully create a web scrapping tool.Through its practical approach, this book strives to teach you by example, where each chapter focuses on the common and practical usage of PhantomJS, and how to extract meaningful information from the web and other services.By the end of the book, you will have acquired the skills to enable you to use PhantomJS for web testing, as well as learning the basics of Jasmine, and how it can be used with PhantomJS.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
12
Index

Downloading PhantomJS

Before we go through the features of PhantomJS, first we need to get our copy of the PhantomJS binaries. Typically, PhantomJS provides downloadable releases of binaries that are precompiled and packaged. You can choose from Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows precompiled packages. To download a copy, go to http://www.phantomjs.org/download.html.

Download your binaries based on your preference of operating system. After downloading, extract the binaries to any folder you desire. That's it! Your PhantomJS binary is ready to be used.

Tip

Add PhantomJS to PATH

Add the /bin folder of PhantomJS into your $PATH OS to make it easier when calling PhantomJS main binary. This allows us to call the binary anywhere without specifying the full path.

We will be using the Mac OS X version of PhantomJS throughout this book for running code examples. Don't worry if you are working on a different platform; the instructions are the same on all platforms.

Tip

Quick PhantomJS install on Mac OS X

As an alternative to downloading the precompiled binary, we can install PhantomJS using brew:

brew update && brew install phantomjs

For more information about brew, visit http://brew.sh/.