Headless Chrome

Requirements

First of all, make sure that you have Chrome at least 59.0 installed.
Also for now it’s supported only on Mac and Linux. (version 60 may get support on Windows)

Using the runner

To run your code using headless chrome, use -R chrome (--runner chrome) option:

$ opal -Rchrome -e “puts ‘Hello, Opal’”
Hello, Opal

The runner also listens for any exceptions and prints formatted stracktraces back to your console:

$ opal -Rchrome -e “
def raising_method
raise ‘test error’
end

raising_method
”

RuntimeError : test error
at $$raise (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:4996:6)
at $$raising_method (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:21144:16)
at (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:21146:14)
at (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:21147:2)

Using exit codes

By default headless chrome runner explicitly sets exit code to 1 when there was any error in the code.

$ opal -Rchrome -e “42”; echo $?
0

$ opal -Rchrome -e “raise ‘error’”; echo $?
RuntimeError : error
at $$raise (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:4996:6)
at (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:21139:14)
at (file:///tmp/chrome-opal.js:21140:2)
1

You can change final exit code by using Kernel#exit, but make sure to require opal/platform in your code.

$ opal -Rchrome -ropal/platform -e “exit(0)”; echo $?
0

$ opal -Rchrome -ropal/platform -e “exit(1)”; echo $?
1

Also Kernel#exit doesn’t abort your script. It simply takes the value that was passed to the first
invocation and persists it in window.OPAL_EXIT_CODE. Later headless chrome runner extracts it from the chrome runtime.

Known limitations

1. exit doesn’t abort you script (but raise/throw does)
2. When you call console.log(one, two, three) from your code headless chrome prints only the first passed object. The reason behind it is the format of the message that chrome sends to the runner. Opal intentionally uses a simplified method from Chrome API (Console.messageAdded) to catch console.log invocations. (Check lib/opal/cli_runners/chrome.js do get more information)

Internals

Under the hood when you call opal -Rchrome -e 'your code' Opal uses chrome runner that is defined in
lib/opal/cli_runners/chrome.rb. This runner tries to connect to localhost:9222 (9222 is a default port for a headless chrome server)
or runs the server on its own. It detects your platform and uses a default path to the chrome executable
(Opal::CliRunners::Chrome#chrome_executable) but you can override it by specifying GOOGLE_CHROME_BINARY environment
variable.

When the server is up and running it passes compiled js code to node lib/opal/cli_runners/chrome.js
as a plain input using stdin (basically, it’s a second part of the runner).
chrome.js is a node js script that does the main job. It runs any provided code on the running chrome server,
catches errors and forwards console messages.

Moreover, you can actually call any js using headless chrome by running

$ echo “console.log(‘Hello, Opal’)” | node lib/opal/cli_runners/chrome.js

NOTE: to run it you need to have a chrome server running on localhost:9222 (usually chrome.rb does it for you)

$ chrome –disable-gpu –headless –remote-debugging-port=9222

Using a remote chrome server

If you want to change a default chrome port or your chrome server is running on a different host:port
you can override default values by specifying CHROME_HOST and CHROME_PORT environment variables:

$ CHROME_HOST=10.10.10.10 CHROME_PORT=8080 opal -Rchrome -e “puts 42”
Connecting to 10.10.10.10:8080…
42

NOTE: CHROME_HOST requires a chrome server to be started. You can’t start remotely a server on a different host.

Additional options

If you need to pass additional CLI options to the Chrome executable you can do so by setting the CHROME_OPTS environment variable:

$ CHROME_OPS=“–window-size=412,732” opal -Rchrome -e “puts 42”
42

For a list of additional options see https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-chrome