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CasperJS vs Puppeteer: What are the differences?
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Execution Environment: CasperJS is built on top of PhantomJS, a headless browser, while Puppeteer is based on the Node.js library. CasperJS offers more high-level functionalities and automation scripts, whereas Puppeteer provides more control and flexibility in interactions with the browser.
Language Support: CasperJS uses JavaScript as its scripting language, while Puppeteer allows users to leverage the full capabilities of Node.js, including using modern JavaScript features such as async/await. This makes Puppeteer more suitable for developers familiar with JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem.
Community Support: Puppeteer has a larger and more active community compared to CasperJS, which results in more frequent updates, bug fixes, and new features. This community support can be crucial for resolving issues or finding resources when working with the tool.
Headless Mode and Browser Options: Puppeteer natively supports headless mode, offering better control over browser options and configurations, while CasperJS requires additional setup to run in headless mode. This makes Puppeteer a more suitable choice for headless browsing scenarios.
Performance: Puppeteer typically has better performance compared to CasperJS due to its underlying architecture and optimized APIs. This can be crucial when dealing with large-scale automation tasks or performance-sensitive applications that require faster execution times.
Official Support and Documentation: Puppeteer is developed and maintained by Google Chrome team, providing official support and comprehensive documentation, ensuring that users have access to reliable resources and updates. CasperJS, on the other hand, may have less official support and documentation available.
In Summary, CasperJS and Puppeteer differ in their execution environment, language support, community backing, headless mode capabilities, performance, and official support/documentation.
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
Pros of CasperJS
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
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Cons of CasperJS
Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10