
HtmlUnit uses the Rhino engine to provide JavaScript and Ajax support as well as partial rendering capability. Īnother is HtmlUnit, a headless browser written in Java. They usually perform faster than full browsers, but are unable to correctly interpret many popular websites.
While most are able to support common browser features (HTML parsing, cookies, XHR, some JavaScript, etc.), they do not render the DOM and have limited support for DOM events. For Node.js, jsdom is the most complete provider. For example, Deno provides browser APIs as part of its design.
Īnother approach is to use software that provides browser APIs.
Jasmine uses Selenium by default, but can use WebKit or Headless Chrome, to run browser tests. Capybara uses headless browsing, either via WebKit or Headless Chrome to mimic user behavior in its testing protocols. Some test automation software and frameworks include headless browsers as part of their testing apparati. Puppeteer - a Node.js library to automate Chrome. Playwright - a Node.js library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Selenium WebDriver - a W3C compliant implementation of WebDriver. There is no indication that headless browsers are used more frequently than non-headless browsers for malicious purposes, like DDoS attacks, SQL injections or cross-site scripting attacksĪs several major browsers natively support headless mode through APIs, some software exists to perform browser automation through a unified interface. However, a study of browser traffic in 2018 found no preference by malicious actors for headless browsers. Automate web sites in unintended ways e.g. Headless browsers have also been misused in various ways: Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use Ajax. Headless browsers are also useful for web scraping. Running automated tests for JavaScript libraries. Test automation in modern web applications ( web testing). The main use cases for headless browsers are: This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS. Since version 59 of Google Chrome and version 56 of Firefox, there is native support for remote control of the browser. They are particularly useful for testing web pages as they are able to render and understand HTML the same way a browser would, including styling elements such as page layout, colour, font selection and execution of JavaScript and Ajax which are usually not available when using other testing methods.
Headless browsers provide automated control of a web page in an environment similar to popular web browsers, but they are executed via a command-line interface or using network communication. Not to be confused with Text-based web browser.Ī headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.