What is PhantomJS and what are its top alternatives?
PhantomJS is a headless browser automation tool that allows users to interact with web pages and capture web content programmatically. It is commonly used for web scraping, website testing, and page automation. Key features include support for various web technologies, scriptable with JavaScript, and ability to render web pages. However, PhantomJS is no longer actively maintained and has been replaced by modern alternatives.
Puppeteer: Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol. Key features include taking screenshots, generating PDFs, and automating form submissions. Pros include active maintenance, great performance, and excellent documentation. Cons compared to PhantomJS include Chrome dependency and larger file size.
Playwright: Playwright is a Node.js library for automating browsers. It supports multiple browsers, including Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox. Key features include robust automation capabilities, cross-browser support, and improved stability. Pros include multi-browser support, activity maintained by Microsoft, and extensive automation functionalities. Cons compared to PhantomJS include a slightly steeper learning curve.
Selenium: Selenium is a powerful tool for automating browsers across many platforms. It supports multiple programming languages such as Python, Java, and C#. Key features include cross-browser testing, parallel test execution, and support for multiple automation frameworks. Pros include wide community support, compatibility with various programming languages, and extensive browser support. Cons compared to PhantomJS include slower performance and more complex setup.
Cypress: Cypress is a front-end testing tool built for the modern web. It is highly recommended for end-to-end testing. Key features include real-time reloads, automatic waiting, and time travel debugging. Pros include easy setup, fast test execution, and built-in test runner. Cons compared to PhantomJS include limited cross-browser support and no support for web scraping.
Headless Chrome: Headless Chrome is a feature of Google Chrome that allows you to run the Chrome browser in a headless environment without a GUI. Key features include navigation controls, network interception, and remote debugging. Pros include official Google support, identical rendering to Chrome, and easy integration with DevTools. Cons compared to PhantomJS include dependency on Chrome and more low-level control.
Nightmare: Nightmare is a high-level browser automation library. It utilizes Electron to control a headless Chromium browser. Key features include taking screenshots, user interactions, and scriptable actions. Pros include simple API, clear documentation, and fast setup. Cons compared to PhantomJS include dependency on Electron and limited community support.
Zombie.js: Zombie.js is a lightweight framework for testing client-side JavaScript code. It simulates a full browser environment without the need for a GUI. Key features include zombie-fied browser, async nature, and headless operation. Pros include fast execution, lightweight, and no external dependencies. Cons compared to PhantomJS include limited functionality and lack of advanced features.
TrifleJS: TrifleJS is a headless automation tool for Internet Explorer. It is based on JScript engine and provides a simple API for automation tasks. Key features include familiar API, IE-specific functionality, and lightweight implementation. Pros include Internet Explorer support, easy setup, and small footprint. Cons compared to PhantomJS include limited browser compatibility and IE-specific features.
Navalia: Navalia is a web automation microservice. It allows users to scale web automation tasks by distributing them across multiple instances. Key features include microservice architecture, scalable automation, and API-driven approach. Pros include scalability, distributed automation, and centralized management. Cons compared to PhantomJS include setup complexity and additional infrastructure requirements.
WebdriverIO: WebdriverIO is a test automation framework that allows you to run tests based on Webdriver protocol. It supports different testing frameworks such as Mocha and Jasmine. Key features include test concurrency, smart selectors, and seamless integration. Pros include flexible architecture, multiple testing frameworks support, and active development. Cons compared to PhantomJS include complex configuration and potential maintenance overhead.
Top Alternatives to PhantomJS
- Selenium
Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) also be automated as well. ...
- Electron
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor. ...
- Protractor
Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would. ...
- wkhtmltopdf
wkhtmltopdf and wkhtmltoimage are command line tools to render HTML into PDF and various image formats using the QT Webkit rendering engine. These run entirely "headless" and do not require a display or display service. ...
- SlimerJS
It allows you to manipulate a web page with an external Javascript script: opening a webpage, clicking on links, modifying the content... It is useful to do functional tests, page automation, network monitoring, screen capture etc. ...
- Puppeteer
Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol. It can also be configured to use full (non-headless) Chrome. ...
- CasperJS
CasperJS is a browser navigation scripting & testing utility written in Javascript for PhantomJS or SlimerJS. ...
- Node.js
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. ...
PhantomJS alternatives & related posts
- Automates browsers177
- Testing154
- Essential tool for running test automation101
- Record-Playback24
- Remote Control24
- Data crawling8
- Supports end to end testing7
- Easy set up6
- Functional testing6
- The Most flexible monitoring system4
- End to End Testing3
- Easy to integrate with build tools3
- Comparing the performance selenium is faster than jasm2
- Record and playback2
- Compatible with Python2
- Easy to scale2
- Integration Tests2
- Integrated into Selenium-Jupiter framework0
- Flaky tests8
- Slow as needs to make browser (even with no gui)4
- Update browser drivers2
related Selenium posts
When you think about test automation, it’s crucial to make it everyone’s responsibility (not just QA Engineers'). We started with Selenium and Java, but with our platform revolving around Ruby, Elixir and JavaScript, QA Engineers were left alone to automate tests. Cypress was the answer, as we could switch to JS and simply involve more people from day one. There's a downside too, as it meant testing on Chrome only, but that was "good enough" for us + if really needed we can always cover some specific cases in a different way.
For our digital QA organization to support a complex hybrid monolith/microservice architecture, our team took on the lofty goal of building out a commonized UI test automation framework. One of the primary requisites included a technical minimalist threshold such that an engineer or analyst with fundamental knowledge of JavaScript could automate their tests with greater ease. Just to list a few: - Nightwatchjs - Selenium - Cucumber - GitHub - Go.CD - Docker - ExpressJS - React - PostgreSQL
With this structure, we're able to combine the automation efforts of each team member into a centralized repository while also providing new relevant metrics to business owners.
- Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications69
- Open source53
- Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code14
- Because it's cross platform8
- Use Node.js in the Main Process4
- Uses a lot of memory19
- User experience never as good as a native app8
- No proper documentation4
- Does not native4
- Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs1
- Wrong reference for dom inspection1
related Electron posts
I'm building most projects using: Server: either Fastify (all projects going forward) or ExpressJS on Node.js (existing, previously) on the server side, and Client app: either Vuetify (currently) or Quasar Framework (going forward) on Vue.js with vuex on Electron for the UI to deliver both web-based and desktop applications for multiple platforms.
The direct support for Android and iOS in Quasar Framework will make it my go-to client UI platform for any new client-side or web work. On the server, I'll probably use Fastly for all my server work, unless I get into Go more in the future.
Update: The mobile support in Quasar is not a sufficiently compelling reason to move me from Vuetify. I have decided to stick with Vuetify for a UI for Vue, as it is richer in components and enables a really great-looking professional result. For mobile platforms, I will just use Cordova to wrap the Vue+Vuetify app for mobile, and Electron to wrap it for desktop platforms.
Vue.js vuex Vue Router Quasar Framework Electron Node.js npm Yarn Git GitHub Netlify My tech stack that helps me develop quickly and efficiently. Wouldn't want it any other way.
- Easy setup9
- Quick tests implementation8
- Flexible6
- Open source5
- Promise support5
- Limited4
related Protractor posts
Currently, we are using Protractor in our project. Since Protractor isn't updated anymore, we are looking for a new tool. The strongest suggestions are WebdriverIO or Puppeteer. Please help me figure out what tool would make the transition fastest and easiest. Please note that Protractor uses its own locator system, and we want the switch to be as simple as possible. Thank you!
Protractor or Cypress for ionic-angular?
We have a huge ionic-angular app with almost 100 pages and 10+ injectables. There are no tests written yet. Before we start, we need some suggestions about the framework. Would you suggest Cypress or Angular's Protractor with Jasmine / Karma for a heavy ionic app with Angular?
related wkhtmltopdf posts
related SlimerJS posts
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
- Chrome only10
related Puppeteer posts
Currently, we are using Protractor in our project. Since Protractor isn't updated anymore, we are looking for a new tool. The strongest suggestions are WebdriverIO or Puppeteer. Please help me figure out what tool would make the transition fastest and easiest. Please note that Protractor uses its own locator system, and we want the switch to be as simple as possible. Thank you!
I work in a company building web apps with AngularJS. I started using Selenium for tests automation, as I am more familiar with Python. However, I found some difficulties, like the impossibility of using IDs and fixed lists of classes, ending up with using xpaths most, which unfortunately could change with fixes and modifications in the code.
So, I started using Puppeteer, but I am still learning. It seems easier to find elements on the webpage, even if the creation and managing of arrays of elements seem to be a little bit more complicated than in Selenium, but it could be also due to my poor knowledge of JavaScript.
Any comments on this comparison and also on comparisons with similar tools are welcome! :)
related CasperJS posts
We use CasperJS because we adopted it back in 2013 for JavaScript frontend testing. It was a really nice system back then compared to what else was out there; you had PhantomJS as a programmable browser that actually rendered CSS and everything, it was really fast (speed is a big downside of e.g. Selenium), and it was possible to make non-flaky frontend integration tests with it.
I wouldn't recommend it today, because PhantomJS is a basically dead project, and as a result, so is CasperJS. I expect we'll migrate to something else. We haven't in large part because 95% of our new tests are written with a simple Node.js-based unit testing framework we use that run 35K lines of unit tests covering most of our JS codebase in 3.6 seconds. And for the things where we want an integration test, CasperJS does work, and I think there's a good chance that waiting another year or two will result in our being able to switch to a much better option than what we'd get if we migrated now.
Node.js
- Npm1.4K
- Javascript1.3K
- Great libraries1.1K
- High-performance1K
- Open source805
- Great for apis486
- Asynchronous477
- Great community423
- Great for realtime apps390
- Great for command line utilities296
- Websockets84
- Node Modules83
- Uber Simple69
- Great modularity59
- Allows us to reuse code in the frontend58
- Easy to start42
- Great for Data Streaming35
- Realtime32
- Awesome28
- Non blocking IO25
- Can be used as a proxy18
- High performance, open source, scalable17
- Non-blocking and modular16
- Easy and Fun15
- Easy and powerful14
- Future of BackEnd13
- Same lang as AngularJS13
- Fullstack12
- Fast11
- Scalability10
- Cross platform10
- Simple9
- Mean Stack8
- Great for webapps7
- Easy concurrency7
- Typescript6
- Fast, simple code and async6
- React6
- Friendly6
- Control everything5
- Its amazingly fast and scalable5
- Easy to use and fast and goes well with JSONdb's5
- Scalable5
- Great speed5
- Fast development5
- It's fast4
- Easy to use4
- Isomorphic coolness4
- Great community3
- Not Python3
- Sooper easy for the Backend connectivity3
- TypeScript Support3
- Blazing fast3
- Performant and fast prototyping3
- Easy to learn3
- Easy3
- Scales, fast, simple, great community, npm, express3
- One language, end-to-end3
- Less boilerplate code3
- Npm i ape-updating2
- Event Driven2
- Lovely2
- Creat for apis1
- Node0
- Bound to a single CPU46
- New framework every day45
- Lots of terrible examples on the internet40
- Asynchronous programming is the worst33
- Callback24
- Javascript19
- Dependency hell11
- Dependency based on GitHub11
- Low computational power10
- Very very Slow7
- Can block whole server easily7
- Callback functions may not fire on expected sequence7
- Breaking updates4
- Unstable4
- Unneeded over complication3
- No standard approach3
- Bad transitive dependency management1
- Can't read server session1
related Node.js posts
I just finished the very first version of my new hobby project: #MovieGeeks. It is a minimalist online movie catalog for you to save the movies you want to see and for rating the movies you already saw. This is just the beginning as I am planning to add more features on the lines of sharing and discovery
For the #BackEnd I decided to use Node.js , GraphQL and MongoDB:
Node.js has a huge community so it will always be a safe choice in terms of libraries and finding solutions to problems you may have
GraphQL because I needed to improve my skills with it and because I was never comfortable with the usual REST approach. I believe GraphQL is a better option as it feels more natural to write apis, it improves the development velocity, by definition it fixes the over-fetching and under-fetching problem that is so common on REST apis, and on top of that, the community is getting bigger and bigger.
MongoDB was my choice for the database as I already have a lot of experience working on it and because, despite of some bad reputation it has acquired in the last months, I still believe it is a powerful database for at least a very long list of use cases such as the one I needed for my website
When I joined NYT there was already broad dissatisfaction with the LAMP (Linux Apache HTTP Server MySQL PHP) Stack and the front end framework, in particular. So, I wasn't passing judgment on it. I mean, LAMP's fine, you can do good work in LAMP. It's a little dated at this point, but it's not ... I didn't want to rip it out for its own sake, but everyone else was like, "We don't like this, it's really inflexible." And I remember from being outside the company when that was called MIT FIVE when it had launched. And been observing it from the outside, and I was like, you guys took so long to do that and you did it so carefully, and yet you're not happy with your decisions. Why is that? That was more the impetus. If we're going to do this again, how are we going to do it in a way that we're gonna get a better result?
So we're moving quickly away from LAMP, I would say. So, right now, the new front end is React based and using Apollo. And we've been in a long, protracted, gradual rollout of the core experiences.
React is now talking to GraphQL as a primary API. There's a Node.js back end, to the front end, which is mainly for server-side rendering, as well.
Behind there, the main repository for the GraphQL server is a big table repository, that we call Bodega because it's a convenience store. And that reads off of a Kafka pipeline.