Puppeteer vs jsdom

Overview

jsdom

Stacks1.6K

Followers55

Votes1

GitHub Stars21.3K

Forks1.8K

Puppeteer

Stacks1.0K

Followers582

Votes26

Puppeteer vs jsdom: What are the differences?

Introduction

Puppeteer and jsdom are two popular tools used for web scraping and automation in JavaScript. While both serve similar purposes, there are several key differences between them. This article highlights the main distinctions between Puppeteer and jsdom.

Execution Environment: Puppeteer is a headless automation tool developed by Google. It provides a full-featured Chrome browser environment for controlling and interacting with web pages programmatically. On the other hand, jsdom is a pure JavaScript implementation of the Document Object Model (DOM). It simulates the behavior of a web browser but does not require a browser installation.
Rendering Capability: Puppeteer can fully render web pages, including executing JavaScript, handling AJAX requests, and rendering dynamic content. It allows you to capture screenshots, generate PDFs, and perform actions as if you were interacting with a real browser. Jsdom, on the other hand, does not have built-in rendering capabilities. It can only parse and manipulate HTML elements, but cannot load or execute JavaScript or CSS.
Dependencies and Platform: Puppeteer is built on top of the Chrome DevTools Protocol and requires a Chromium or Chrome installation to run. It can be used on various platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Jsdom, on the other hand, only relies on the JavaScript engine and does not require any additional installations. It can be used in any JavaScript environment, including Node.js, without specific platform dependencies.
Interactions with External Resources: Puppeteer allows you to interact with external resources through its API. You can handle file uploads, download files, and even authenticate with HTTP requests. Jsdom, on the other hand, does not have native support for these interactions. It focuses primarily on manipulating HTML documents and does not provide built-in functionality for handling external resources.
Flexibility and Customization: Puppeteer provides a wide range of features and options to customize and control the browser environment. You can modify viewport size, emulate various devices, enable or disable JavaScript, intercept network requests, and more. Jsdom, on the other hand, has limited customization options. It is primarily used for parsing and manipulating HTML documents, and does not offer as much flexibility as Puppeteer.
Performance and Scalability: Puppeteer is optimized for performance and can handle complex web pages with ease. It leverages the powerful capabilities of the Chrome browser for rendering and executing JavaScript. Jsdom, on the other hand, may have performance limitations, especially when dealing with large and complex web pages. It does not have the same level of optimization as Puppeteer.

In Summary, Puppeteer provides a full-featured headless browser environment with rendering capabilities, while jsdom is a lightweight DOM implementation that focuses on parsing and manipulating HTML elements without rendering or executing JavaScript.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on jsdom, Puppeteer

Ankur

Software Engineer

Dec 4, 2019

Needs advice

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?

73k views73k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

jsdom	Puppeteer
It is a pure-JavaScript implementation of many web standards, notably the WHATWG DOM and HTML Standards, for use with Node.js. In general, the goal of the project is to emulate enough of a subset of a web browser to be useful for testing and scraping real-world web applications.	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.
Canvas support;Encoding sniffing;Closing down a jsdom;Running jsdom inside a web browser;Debugging the DOM using Chrome Devtools	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 21.3K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 1.8K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 1.6K	Stacks 1.0K
Followers 55	Followers 582
Votes 1	Votes 26
Pros & Cons
Pros 1 Lightweight	Pros 10 Scriptable web browser 10 Very well documented 6 Promise based Cons 10 Chrome only
Integrations
JavaScript Node.js Browserify HTML5	Node.js

What are some alternatives to jsdom, Puppeteer?

Playwright

It is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers with a single API. It enables cross-browser web automation that is ever-green, capable, reliable and fast.

PhantomJS

PhantomJS is a headless WebKit scriptable with JavaScript. It is used by hundreds of developers and dozens of organizations for web-related development workflow.

HeadlessTesting

Headless Browser Cloud for Developers. Connect your Puppeteer and Playwright scripts to our Cloud. Automated Browser Testing with Puppeteer and Playwright in the Cloud.

CasperJS

CasperJS is a browser navigation scripting & testing utility written in Javascript for PhantomJS or SlimerJS.

Splash

It is a headless browser that executes JavaScript for people crawling websites. It is open source and fully integrated with Scrapy and Portia. You can also use its API to integrate with any project that needs to render JavaScript pages.

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.

Chromeless

Chrome automation made simple. Runs locally or headless on AWS Lambda.

Serverless Chrome

The aim of this project is to provide the scaffolding for using Headless Chrome during a serverless function invocation. Serverless Chrome takes care of building and bundling the Chrome binaries and making sure Chrome is running when your serverless function executes. In addition, this project also provides a few "example" handlers for common patterns (e.g. taking a screenshot of a page, printing to PDF, some scraping, etc.)

Related Comparisons

Puppeteer vs jsdom: What are the differences?

Introduction

Execution Environment: Puppeteer is a headless automation tool developed by Google. It provides a full-featured Chrome browser environment for controlling and interacting with web pages programmatically. On the other hand, jsdom is a pure JavaScript implementation of the Document Object Model (DOM). It simulates the behavior of a web browser but does not require a browser installation.
Rendering Capability: Puppeteer can fully render web pages, including executing JavaScript, handling AJAX requests, and rendering dynamic content. It allows you to capture screenshots, generate PDFs, and perform actions as if you were interacting with a real browser. Jsdom, on the other hand, does not have built-in rendering capabilities. It can only parse and manipulate HTML elements, but cannot load or execute JavaScript or CSS.
Dependencies and Platform: Puppeteer is built on top of the Chrome DevTools Protocol and requires a Chromium or Chrome installation to run. It can be used on various platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. Jsdom, on the other hand, only relies on the JavaScript engine and does not require any additional installations. It can be used in any JavaScript environment, including Node.js, without specific platform dependencies.
Interactions with External Resources: Puppeteer allows you to interact with external resources through its API. You can handle file uploads, download files, and even authenticate with HTTP requests. Jsdom, on the other hand, does not have native support for these interactions. It focuses primarily on manipulating HTML documents and does not provide built-in functionality for handling external resources.
Flexibility and Customization: Puppeteer provides a wide range of features and options to customize and control the browser environment. You can modify viewport size, emulate various devices, enable or disable JavaScript, intercept network requests, and more. Jsdom, on the other hand, has limited customization options. It is primarily used for parsing and manipulating HTML documents, and does not offer as much flexibility as Puppeteer.
Performance and Scalability: Puppeteer is optimized for performance and can handle complex web pages with ease. It leverages the powerful capabilities of the Chrome browser for rendering and executing JavaScript. Jsdom, on the other hand, may have performance limitations, especially when dealing with large and complex web pages. It does not have the same level of optimization as Puppeteer.

Puppeteer vs jsdom

Overview