PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer • Hacker News Board

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#21

Post by onion2k » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:33 AM UTC

malinens wrote: post #8

My colleague from automatic testing says that phantomjs actually is much more stable than chrome...

That's true, but in my experience the instability of Chrome comes from opening and closing it's windows repeatedly as a large test suite often does - occasionally it doesn't seem to like opening a new instance while another is closing. Headless mode should resolve that problem.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#22

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:34 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #19

That sucks for any scraping use case. I have to imagine google has built in some way to detect headless browser mode serverside, even if only they can access it.

[deleted]

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#23

Post by wayn3 » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:37 AM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #19

That sucks for any scraping use case. I have to imagine google has built in some way to detect headless browser mode serverside, even if only they can access it.

i use phantomjs with the chrome webdriver, or whatever it may be called, already, all the time.

if they wanted to do that, theyd already do it. this change doesnt seem to be all that big.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#24

Post by etatoby » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:37 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Downloading any kind of web page where a simple wget or curl turns out empty, for instance anything made with React or other advanced JS frameworks.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#25

Post by hpaavola » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:40 AM UTC

Also Firefox will get headless mode in few releases https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1338004

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#26

Post by etatoby » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:41 AM UTC

frik wrote: post #3

That's quite sad.

It might be for the best. One of the many companies using PhantomJS to make money could go ahead and employ Vitaly to work on the project full time.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#27

Post by hakanensari » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:41 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

We automate buying things on sites like Amazon.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#28

Post by wfunction » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:43 AM UTC

redsummer wrote: post #4

I'm curious - What is the utility of headless browsers? Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

While we're on the topic, does anyone know where one might find scripts to scrape bank statements so you don't have to download them manually every month? (This is one thing I would find headless browsers useful for...)

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#29

Post by tal_berzniz » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

Thank you for PhantomJS! Been using it for testing, generating PDFs and screenshot.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#30

Post by masklinn » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:45 AM UTC

Hernanpm wrote: post #18

Besides testing, my team uses phantomjs to convert pages to PDF and also to convert javascript generated charts to images. This is sad news, I'm don't think chrome eventually will add support for.

You can use WebDriver to take screenshots. OTOH I don't think there's any way to do PDF generation without fucking around with injecting window.print() and trying to go from there.