CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsphantomjs
silkAdmin
silkAdmin

Reputation: 4830

Passing a value from PhantomJS to node.js

I have a phantomJS script that is executed via an exec() call in a node.js script. Now I need to return a string from the PhantomJS script so that it can be utilized back in node.
Is there a way to achieve that ?

Node app:

child = exec('./phantomjs dumper.js',
    function (error, stdout, stderr) {
        console.log(stdout, stderr);      // Always empty
    });

dumper.js (Phantom)

var system = require('system');
var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open( system.args[1], function (status) {
    if (status !== 'success') {
        console.log('Unable to access the network!');
    } else {

        return "String"; // Doesn't work
    }
    phantom.exit('String2'); //Doesn't work either
});

Upvotes: 10

Views: 4466

Answers (2)

Josh Mc
Josh Mc

Reputation: 10244

Much simpler way (if you have the option) is to use the NPM module phantom instead of phantomjs. This allows you to access the browser directly in nodejs instead of maintaining separate scripts.

Upvotes: 0

3on
3on

Reputation: 6339

Yeah just output a JSON string from PhantomJS using JSON.stringify(result) and parse it in node.js with JSON.parse(stdout).

Like this for example:

Node.js:

child = exec('./phantomjs dumper.js',
    function (error, stdout, stderr) {
        console.log(stdout, stderr);      // Always empty
        var result = JSON.parse(stdout);
    }
);

PhantomJS:

var system = require('system');
var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open( system.args[1], function (status) {
    if (status !== 'success') {
        console.log('Unable to access the network!');
    } else {

        console.log(JSON.stringify({string:"This is a string", more: []}));
    }
    phantom.exit();
});

Here is some boilerplate for how to use PhantomJS to scrape.

Upvotes: 11

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