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Puppet Labs vs Puppeteer: What are the differences?
Introduction
In the world of automation and deployment, Puppet Labs and Puppeteer are two commonly used tools. While both share the name "Puppet," they serve different purposes and have distinctive features. Below, we will explore the key differences between Puppet Labs and Puppeteer.
Purpose: Puppet Labs, also known as Puppet, is a configuration management tool that helps in automating the deployment and management of software. It focuses on maintaining desired system configurations. On the other hand, Puppeteer is a Node.js library that provides a high-level API for automating web browser actions. It is primarily used for web scraping, automated testing, and UI testing.
Language: Puppet Labs uses a custom declarative language called Puppet DSL (Domain Specific Language). It provides a simple and easy-to-understand syntax for defining desired configuration states. In contrast, Puppeteer uses JavaScript, making it more accessible to developers who are already familiar with the language.
Platform: Puppet Labs is designed to work across various platforms, including Linux, Windows, macOS, and several Unix-like systems. It offers cross-platform support for managing systems regardless of the underlying infrastructure. In contrast, Puppeteer is specifically built to work with the Google Chrome browser. It leverages the Chrome DevTools Protocol to control the browser and perform automated tasks.
Scope: Puppet Labs focuses on managing and maintaining system configurations on a larger scale. It offers powerful features like infrastructure as code, version control integration, and resource abstraction. Puppeteer, on the other hand, is primarily focused on browser automation and web scraping. It provides a versatile API to interact with web pages and manipulate web elements.
Community and Ecosystem: Puppet Labs has a large and thriving community of users and contributors. It offers extensive documentation, a vast collection of pre-built modules, and a marketplace for sharing reusable configurations. Puppeteer, being a relatively newer tool, has a growing community. However, it benefits from the broader JavaScript ecosystem, with a wide range of libraries and frameworks that can be used in conjunction with it.
Integration and Extensibility: Puppet Labs can integrate with other tools and systems through its ecosystem of modules and plugins. It can interact with different infrastructure components like cloud platforms, databases, and networking devices. Puppeteer, as a JavaScript library, can be seamlessly integrated with other Node.js modules and libraries. It also allows for extending its functionalities through custom scripts and browser extensions.
In summary, Puppet Labs is a configuration management tool focused on system automation and maintenance, while Puppeteer is a JavaScript library for browser automation and web scraping. They differ in purpose, language, platform, scope, community, and integration capabilities.
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.
I'm just getting started using Vagrant to help automate setting up local VMs to set up a Kubernetes cluster (development and experimentation only). (Yes, I do know about minikube)
I'm looking for a tool to help install software packages, setup users, etc..., on these VMs. I'm also fairly new to Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. What's a good one to start with to learn? I might decide to try all 3 at some point for my own curiosity.
The most important factors for me are simplicity, ease of use, shortest learning curve.
I have been working with Puppet and Ansible. The reason why I prefer ansible is the distribution of it. Ansible is more lightweight and therefore more popular. This leads to situations, where you can get fully packaged applications for ansible (e.g. confluent) supported by the vendor, but only incomplete packages for Puppet.
The only advantage I would see with Puppet if someone wants to use Foreman. This is still better supported with Puppet.
If you are just starting out, might as well learn Kubernetes There's a lot of tools that come with Kube that make it easier to use and most importantly: you become cloud-agnostic. We use Ansible because it's a lot simpler than Chef or Puppet and if you use Docker Compose for your deployments you can re-use them with Kubernetes later when you migrate
Pros of Puppet Labs
- Devops52
- Automate it44
- Reusable components26
- Dynamic and idempotent server configuration21
- Great community18
- Very scalable12
- Cloud management12
- Easy to maintain10
- Free tier9
- Works with Amazon EC26
- Declarative4
- Ruby4
- Works with Azure3
- Works with OpenStack3
- Nginx2
- Ease of use1
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
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Cons of Puppet Labs
- Steep learning curve3
- Customs types idempotence1
Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10