yoshikiohshima / croquet-browserless-test

An example of using Browserless.io to test a Croquet app

A Simple Browserless tester Last Modified: 2021-07-19

Introduction

browserless.io provides a cloud service specialized to run remote-controllable Chrome instances (or bots). Theoretically, anybody can set up a same kind of cloud app on a generic cloud provider like Google, or even on your own server computer. However, it is indeed much easier to just pay a bit of money to browserless.io and be ready to have fun.

You can write a script for the bot and test it on your local computer. When you are ready, you send the script to the browserless.io server to run many clients at once.

An example

Take a look at run.js. It follows the structure described on their page: browserless /function API.

There is a few restrictions on the style of the script to keep the launcher script browserless.sh simple.

• string constants in the script have to use single quotes.
• the exported function has to be named "run".
• the run function is expected to return a promise that resolves to a screenshot object.
• the API allows the "context" argument, but the launcher below does not support it yet.

Local Test

run npm install and then run:

        node local.js

Then, if you access the following URL with a regular browser:

        localhost:8080/image

the run() function in run.js is invoked. (Perhaps the function to run should be provided as an argument.) When the run function returns a screenshot, it is shown in the browser window.

Deployment

If your test program runs fine. Get a browserless account and put the API key in a file (below, it is called apiKey.txt).

You run the browserless.sh with three arguments: 1) the key file name, 2) the script file name, and 3) the number of replicas:

        ./browserless.sh apiKey.txt run.js 5

The script minifies the specified script, and issues a /function call via curl.