Using headless Chrome as an automated screenshot tool

This repo contains an example implementation of using headless Chrome as an automated screenshot tool on linux, which is a common use case for PhantomJS.

Contributions are welcome.

Setup

The setup below was used on a Vagrant running Ubuntu 14 Trusty Tahr. It assumes you've already cloned the repo and run npm install.

# Install Google Chrome
# https://askubuntu.com/questions/79280/how-to-install-chrome-browser-properly-via-command-line
sudo apt-get install libxss1 libappindicator1 libindicator7
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome*.deb  # Might show "errors", fixed by next line
sudo apt-get install -f

# Install Node Stable (v8)
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

# Run Chrome as background process
# https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/lkgr/headless/README.md
# --disable-gpu currently required, see link above
google-chrome --headless --hide-scrollbars --remote-debugging-port=9222 --disable-gpu &

# Take the screenshot
node index.js --url="http://www.eff.org"

The screenshot will then be available as output.png

Other Resources

• Getting Started with Headless Chrome
• Headless Chromium
• Chrome Debugging Protocol Viewer