Headless (UI-less) Web Browsing, Crawling with Node.js, Puppeteer and Chromium

Top web automation library for Node.js:

• Puppeteer, no doubts, by Google, optimal and fast
• Installation:
• npm install puppeteer
• Or:
• npm install puppeteer-core

Puppeteer options:

1. Use Google Chrome?
   It's not just 1-line command to install Google Chrome, required to create repo file for Linux package managers to install, use Chromium simpler and better.
2. Use Chromium binary installed together with puppeteer:
   npm install puppeteer
   Seems not working on CentOS
3. Use separate Chromium binary:
   sudo yum install chromium -y #CentOS
   sudo apt install chromium-browser -y #Ubuntu
   npm install puppeteer-core
   Works OK on all Linuxes

Chromium binary paths:

1. CentOS
   /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-browser
   Or just:
   /usr/bin/chromium-browser
2. Ubuntu
   /usr/bin/chromium-browser

Test Puppeteer with Chromium binary:

//Libs

import puppeteer_core from "puppeteer-core";

//Shortcuts

var log       = console.log;

var puppeteer = puppeteer_core;

//Constants

//Browser path

var BPATH ="/usr/bin/chromium-browser";

//TEST

(async ()=>{

  var Browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath:BPATH});

  var Page    = await Browser.newPage();

  //Load a page and add jQuery

  await Page.goto("https://google.com");

  await Page.addScriptTag({

    url: "https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.2.1.min.js"

  });

  //Wait 5s for load

  await new Promise(Resolve => setTimeout(Resolve,5000));

  //Evaluate some JS

  var Result = await Page.evaluate(`$.fn.jquery`);

  log(Result);

  //Close browser

  Browser.close();

})();

//EOF