spider-rs/chrome-server

API to manage chromium headless processes easily with xvfb support

chrome

Chrome instance and panel to manage startup and shutdowns easily.

Installation

cargo install chrome_server

Usage

1. Can spawn and shutdown multiple chrome instances.
2. Get chrome ws connections and status.

The current instance binds chrome to 0.0.0.0 when starting via API.

Use the env variable REMOTE_ADDRESS to change the address of the chrome instance between physical or network.

The application will pass alp health checks when using port 6000 to get the status of the chrome container.

A side loaded application is required to run chrome on a load balancer, one of the main purposes of the control panel.

The default port is 9222 for chrome.

Building without Docker

In order to build without docker set the BUILD_CHROME env var to true.

Mac

If your running locally use the following to start the args with the first param chrome_server '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome'

API

1. POST: fork to start a new chrome instance or use fork/$port with the port to startup the instance.
2. POST: shutdown/$PID to shutdown the instance. ex: curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/shutdown/77057'
3. POST: /json/version get the json info of the chrome instance to connect to web sockets.

Curl Examples

fork

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/fork'

shutdown

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/shutdown'

/json/version

curl --location --request GET 'http://localhost:6000/json/version' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json'

# example output
{
   "Browser": "HeadlessChrome/114.0.5735.133",
   "Protocol-Version": "1.3",
   "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) HeadlessChrome/114.0.5735.133 Safari/537.36",
   "V8-Version": "11.4.183.23",
   "WebKit-Version": "537.36 (@fbfa2ce68d01b2201d8c667c2e73f648a61c4f4a)",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://127.0.0.1:9222/devtools/browser/74f18759-f4b3-4b1f-a68c-942570542f0e"
}

Args

1. The first arg is the chrome application location example linux '/opt/google/chrome/chrome'.
2. The second arg is the chrome address 127.0.0.1.
3. The third arg you can pass in init to auto start chrome on 9222.

Example to start chrome (all params are optional):

chrome_server '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome' 127.0.0.1 init
# Chrome PID: 87659
# Chrome server at localhost:6000
# DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:9222/devtools/browser/c789f9e0-7f65-495d-baee-243eb454ea15

ENV Variables

# the chrome path on the OS
CHROME_PATH=
# the remote address of the chrome intance
REMOTE_ADDRESS=

Docker

You can build this image using the following:

1. Dockerfile (Default)
2. Dockerfile.playwright (Playwright Custom Chrome)
3. Dockerfile.xvfb (Virtual Display)