PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer • Hacker News Board

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#31

Post by avip » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:46 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?

>Are there people who earn money by getting it to automatically fill out forms, enter competitions etc?

Yes. Tiny ex. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1165680

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#32

Post by avaer » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:46 AM UTC

Open source software has to be one of the least efficient markets out there.

If you sum up the very real value PhantomJS has delivered to very real companies over the last several years, napkin math tells me we wouldn't have the project being abandoned for being a "bloody hell" to work on.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#33

Post by pricechild » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:47 AM UTC

wfunction wrote: post #28

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...)

Every UK bank I've used allows some format of csv/qif/ofx export.

Are you in the US?

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#34

Post by tjelen » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:48 AM UTC

demonshalo wrote: post #20

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?

A great example would be PDF generation for things like invoices. Rather than generating a pdf with something like PHP or Java. Render a regular html page with all the css you want (super easy compared to drawing a PDF using PHP) and then proceed to use a pdf printer on that page. You could run such a thing as a microservice using a headless browser or PhantomJS. There are probably better ways to do this but that's o…

The Webkit/PhantomJS PDF export actually supports SVG embedding (as real vectors), Webfonts and many other things.

It's possible to create pretty advanced layouts with maps, graphs using that. Even embedding IFrames with e.g. Google Maps works.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#35

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:52 AM UTC

avaer wrote: post #32

Open source software has to be one of the least efficient markets out there. If you sum up the very real value PhantomJS has delivered to very real companies over the last several years, napkin math tells me we wouldn't have the project being abandoned for being a "bloody hell" to work on.

The main problem for developers is that getting your company to pay for something like developer tools can be very hard and a long project. Ideally every team gets a budget and a credit card to do as they see fit, but in practice a lot of (especially bigger) companies have a whole acquisition process. It's not uncommon for the hours spent in getting a license for e.g. an editor to be far more expensive than the product itself. I believe this is often highlighted again when Sublime Text is in the news again.

This as opposed to open source tooling which has no such hurdles.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#36

Post by Cthulhu_ » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:53 AM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #14

> I even bought the Mac for that! I did too, then found out you also needed a dev license for users being able to run your app. Supporting Mac/OSX is damn expensive if your app is free.

For iOS development I believe they got rid of that requirement, you can develop iOS apps (at least) using a personal dev account; only when you want to go to the app store do they ask for the license fee.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#37

Post by vidarh » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:54 AM UTC

wfunction wrote: post #28

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...)

If your authentication is basic enough, it should be a problem to write one. The problem with a lot of banks is things like two-factor auth to do anything. If I didn't have a mortgage locked in at a crazily great rate, I'd consider changing banks just to get one that'll let me automate statement downloads. The alternative is to build a device to press buttons on their 2FA device... Come to thing of it that might be a fun hack.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#38

Post by LoSboccacc » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:56 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 have a complex matrix of layouts and styles an user can chose from and we need to test them across all browser to make sure any improvement doesn't mess with others.

It's way cheaper to launch a browser headless at all the resolution we need and grab screenshot to visually compare them at glance, instead of goin one by one at hand

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#39

Post by wfunction » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

pricechild wrote: post #33

wfunction wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Every UK bank I've used allows some format of csv/qif/ofx export. Are you in the US?

The format isn't the issue. The problem is I want it to be API-friendly so I don't even have to think about it; my system should download it automatically.

But yes, I'm talking about the US.

Re: PhantomJS: Stepping down as maintainer

#40

Post by JepZ » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 10:57 AM UTC

I am happy for the guy as he seems to be able to let go without letting anybody down (which seems to be important to him). At the same time, it is sad when people have such a pressure for something they probably started as a fun project.