Headless Browser and scraping - solutions

Question

I'm trying to put list of possible solutions for browser automatic tests suits and headless browser platforms capable of scraping.

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BROWSER TESTING / SCRAPING:

• Selenium - polyglot flagship in browser automation, bindings for Python, Ruby, JavaScript, C#, Haskell and more, IDE for Firefox (as an extension) for faster test deployment. Can act as a Server and has tons of features.

JAVASCRIPT

• PhantomJS - JavaScript, headless testing with screen capture and automation, uses Webkit. As of version 1.8 Selenium's WebDriver API is implemented, so you can use any WebDriver binding and tests will be compatible with Selenium
• SlimerJS - similar to PhantomJS, uses Gecko (Firefox) instead of WebKit
• CasperJS - JavaScript, build on both PhantomJS and SlimerJS, has extra features
• Ghost Driver - JavaScript implementation of the WebDriver Wire Protocol for PhantomJS.
• new PhantomCSS - CSS regression testing. A CasperJS module for automating visual regression testing with PhantomJS and Resemble.js.
• new WebdriverCSS - plugin for Webdriver.io for automating visual regression testing
• new PhantomFlow - Describe and visualize user flows through tests. An experimental approach to Web user interface testing.
• new trifleJS - ports the PhantomJS API to use the Internet Explorer engine.
• new CasperJS IDE (commercial)

NODE.JS

• Node-phantom - bridges the gap between PhantomJS and node.js
• WebDriverJs - Selenium WebDriver bindings for node.js by Selenium Team
• WD.js - node module for WebDriver/Selenium 2
• yiewd - WD.js wrapper using latest Harmony generators! Get rid of the callback pyramid with yield
• ZombieJs - Insanely fast, headless full-stack testing using node.js
• NightwatchJs - Node JS based testing solution using Selenium Webdriver
• Chimera - Chimera: can do everything what phantomJS does, but in a full JS environment
• Dalek.js - Automated cross browser testing with JavaScript through Selenium Webdriver
• Webdriver.io - better implementation of WebDriver bindings with predefined 50+ actions
• Nightmare - Electron bridge with a high-level API.
• jsdom - Tailored towards web scraping. A very lightweight DOM implemented in Node.js, it supports pages with javascript.
• new Puppeteer - Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium. Puppeteer runs headless by default.

WEB SCRAPING / MINING

• Scrapy - Python, mainly a scraper/miner - fast, well documented and, can be linked with Django Dynamic Scraper for nice mining deployments, or Scrapy Cloud for PaaS (server-less) deployment, works in terminal or an server stand-alone proces, can be used with Celery, built on top of Twisted
• Snailer - node.js module, untested yet.
• Node-Crawler - node.js module, untested yet.

ONLINE TOOLS

• new Web Scraping Language - Simple syntax to crawl the web

• new Online HTTP client - Dedicated SO answer

• dead CasperBox - Run CasperJS scripts online

Android TOOLS for Automation

• new Mechanica Browser App

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RELATED LINKS & RESOURCES

• Comparsion of Webscraping software
• new Resemble.js : Image analysis and comparison

Questions:

• Any pure Node.js solution or Nodejs to PhanthomJS/CasperJS module that actually works and is documented?

Answer: Chimera seems to go in that direction, checkout Chimera

• Other solutions capable of easier JavaScript injection than Selenium?

• Do you know any pure ruby solutions?

Answer: Checkout the list created by rjk with ruby based solutions

• Do you know any related tech or solution?

Feel free to edit this question and add content as you wish! Thank you for your contributions!

Answer 1

If Ruby is your thing, you may also try:

• https://github.com/chriskite/anemone (dev stopped)
• https://github.com/sparklemotion/mechanize
• https://github.com/postmodern/spidr
• https://github.com/stewartmckee/cobweb
• http://watirwebdriver.com/ (Selenium)

also, Nokogiri gem can be used for scraping:

• http://nokogiri.org/

there is a dedicated book about how to utilise nokogiri for scraping by packt publishing

Answer 2

http://triflejs.org/ is like phantomjs but based on IE

Answer 3

A kind of JS-based Selenium is Dalek.js. It not only aims for automated frontend-tests, you can also do screenshots with it. It has webdrivers for all important browsers. Unfortunately those webdrivers seem to be worth improving (just not to say "buggy" to Firefox).