phantomjs

phantomjs
==================

An NPM installer for PhantomJS, headless webkit with JS API.

$3

**Pre-2.0, this package was published to NPM as phantomjs.
We changed the name to phantomjs-prebuilt at
the request of PhantomJS team.**

Please update your package references from phantomjs to phantomjs-prebuilt


Building and Installing
-----------------------

``shell
npm install phantomjs
`

Or grab the source and

`shell
node ./install.js
`

What this installer is really doing is just grabbing a particular "blessed" (by
this module) version of Phantom. As new versions of Phantom are released
and vetted, this module will be updated accordingly.

Running
-------

`shell
bin/phantomjs [phantom arguments]
`

And npm will install a link to the binary in node_modules/.bin as
it is wont to do.

Running via node
----------------

The package exports a path string that contains the path to the
phantomjs binary/executable.

Below is an example of using this package via node.

`javascript
var path = require('path')
var childProcess = require('child_process')
var phantomjs = require('phantomjs')
var binPath = phantomjs.path

var childArgs = [
path.join(__dirname, 'phantomjs-script.js'),
'some other argument (passed to phantomjs script)'
]

childProcess.execFile(binPath, childArgs, function(err, stdout, stderr) {
// handle results
})

`

Versioning
----------

The major and minor number tracks the version of PhantomJS that will be
installed. The patch number is incremented when there is either an installer
update or a patch build of the phantom binary.

Pre-2.0, this package was published to NPM as phantomjs.
We changed the name to phantomjs-prebuilt at
the request of PhantomJS team.

Deciding Where To Get PhantomJS
-------------------------------

By default, this package will download phantomjs from our releases.
This should work fine for most people.

##### Downloading from a custom URL

If github is down, or the Great Firewall is blocking github, you may need to use
a different download mirror. To set a mirror, set npm config property phantomjs_cdnurl.

Alternatives include https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads (the official download site)
and http://cnpmjs.org/downloads.

`Shell
npm install phantomjs --phantomjs_cdnurl=https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads
`

Or add property into your .npmrc file (https://www.npmjs.org/doc/files/npmrc.html)

`
phantomjs_cdnurl=https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads
`

Another option is to use PATH variable PHANTOMJS_CDNURL.
`shell
PHANTOMJS_CDNURL=https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads npm install phantomjs
`

##### Using PhantomJS from disk

If you plan to install phantomjs many times on a single machine, you can
install the phantomjs binary on PATH. The installer will automatically detect
and use that for non-global installs.

Cross-Platform Repositories
---------------------------

PhantomJS needs to be compiled separately for each platform. This installer
finds a prebuilt binary for your operating system, and downloads it.

If you check your dependencies into git, and work on a cross-platform
team, then you need to tell NPM to rebuild any platform-specific dependencies. Run

`shell
npm rebuild
`

as part of your build process. This problem is not specific to PhantomJS, and this
solution will work for any NodeJS package with native or platform-specific code.

If you know in advance that you want to install PhantomJS for a specific architecture,
you can set the environment variables: PHANTOMJS_PLATFORM
(to set target platform) and PHANTOMJS_ARCH (to set target
arch), where platform and arch are valid values for
process.platform and process.arch.

A Note on PhantomJS
-------------------

PhantomJS is not a library for NodeJS. It's a separate environment and code
written for node is unlikely to be compatible. In particular PhantomJS does
not expose a Common JS package loader.

This is an _NPM wrapper_ and can be used to conveniently make Phantom available
It is not a Node JS wrapper.

I have had reasonable experiences writing standalone Phantom scripts which I
then drive from within a node program by spawning phantom in a child process.

Read the PhantomJS FAQ for more details: http://phantomjs.org/faq.html

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An extra note on Linux usage, from the PhantomJS download page:

> There is no requirement to install Qt, WebKit, or any other libraries. It
> however still relies on Fontconfig (the package fontconfig or libfontconfig,
> depending on the distribution).

Troubleshooting
---------------

##### Installation fails with spawn ENOENT

This is NPM's way of telling you that it was not able to start a process. It usually means:

- node is not on your PATH, or otherwise not correctly installed.
- tar is not on your PATH. This package expects tar on your PATH on Linux-based platforms.

Check your specific error message for more information.

##### Installation fails with Error: EPERM or operation not permitted or permission denied

This error means that NPM was not able to install phantomjs to the file system. There are three
major reasons why this could happen:

- You don't have write access to the installation directory.
- The permissions in the NPM cache got messed up, and you need to run npm cache clean to fix them.
- You have over-zealous anti-virus software installed, and it's blocking file system writes.

##### Installation fails with Error: read ECONNRESET or Error: connect ETIMEDOUT

This error means that something went wrong with your internet connection, and the installer
was not able to download the PhantomJS binary for your platform. Please try again.

##### I tried again, but I get ECONNRESET or ETIMEDOUT consistently.

Do you live in China, or a country with an authoritarian government? We've seen problems where
the GFW or local ISP blocks github, preventing the installer from downloading the binary.

Try visiting the download page manually.
If that page is blocked, you can try using a different CDN with the PHANTOMJS_CDNURL
env variable described above.

##### I am behind a corporate proxy that uses self-signed SSL certificates to intercept encrypted traffic.

You can tell NPM and the PhantomJS installer to skip validation of ssl keys with NPM's
strict-ssl setting:

`
npm set strict-ssl false
`

WARNING: Turning off strict-ssl leaves you vulnerable to attackers reading
your encrypted traffic, so run this at your own risk!

##### I tried everything, but my network is b0rked. What do I do?

If you install PhantomJS manually, and put it on PATH, the installer will try to
use the manually-installed binaries.

##### I'm on Debian or Ubuntu, and the installer failed because it couldn't find node

Some Linux distros tried to rename node to nodejs due to a package
conflict. This is a non-portable change, and we do not try to support this. The
official documentation
recommends that you run apt-get install nodejs-legacy to symlink node to nodejs
on those platforms, or many NodeJS programs won't work properly.

Contributing
------------

Questions, comments, bug reports, and pull requests are all welcome. Submit them at
the project on GitHub. If you haven't contributed to an
Medium project before please head over to the
Open Source Project and fill
out an OCLA (it should be pretty painless).

Bug reports that include steps-to-reproduce (including code) are the
best. Even better, make them in the form of pull requests.

Author
------

Dan Pupius
(personal website) and
Nick Santos, supported by
A Medium Corporation.

License
-------

Copyright 2012 A Medium Corporation.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
See the top-level file LICENSE.txt` and
(http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0).