Headless Browser
Headless browser – Wikipedia
A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.
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. 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. [1]
Since version 59 of Google Chrome[2][3] and version 56[4] of Firefox, [5] there is native support for remote control of the browser. This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS. [6]
Use cases[edit]
The main use cases for headless browsers are:
Test automation in modern web applications (web testing)
Taking screenshots of web pages.
Running automated tests for JavaScript libraries.
Automating interaction of web pages.
Other uses[edit]
Headless browsers are also useful for web scraping. Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use Ajax. [7]
Headless browsers have also been misused in various ways:
Perform DDoS attacks on web sites. [8]
Increase advertisement impressions. [9]
Automate web sites in unintended ways[10] e. g. for credential stuffing. [11]
However, a study of browser traffic in 2018 found no preference by malicious actors for headless browsers. [3] 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 attacks
Usage[edit]
As several major browsers natively support headless mode through APIs, some software exists to perform browser automation through a unified interface. These include:
Selenium WebDriver – a W3C compliant implementation of WebDriver[12]
Playwright – a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit[13]
Puppeteer – a library to automate Chrome[14]
Test Automation[edit]
Some test automation software and frameworks include headless browsers as part of their testing apparati. [3]
Capybara uses headless browsing, either via WebKit or Headless Chrome to mimic user behavior in its testing protocols. [15]
Jasmine uses Selenium by default, but can use WebKit or Headless Chrome, to run browser tests. [16]
Alternatives[edit]
Another approach is to use software that provides browser APIs. For example, Deno provides browser APIs as part of its design. For, jsdom[17] is the most complete provider. 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. They usually perform faster than full browsers, but are unable to correctly interpret many popular websites. [18][19][20]
Another is HtmlUnit, a headless browser written in Java. HtmlUnit uses the Rhino engine to provide JavaScript and Ajax support as well as partial rendering capability. [21][22]
List of headless browsers[edit]
These are various software that provide headless browser APIs.
Splash is a headless web browser written in Python using the WebKit layout engine via Qt. It has an HTTP API, Lua scripting support and a built-in IPython (Jupyter)-based IDE. Development started at ScrapingHub in 2013; it is partially funded by DARPA. [23][24]
is a simulated browser environment for [25]
SimpleBrowser is a headless web browser written in C# supporting Standard 2. 0[26]
DotNetBrowser is a proprietary Chromium-based library that provides the off-screen rendering mode and can be used without embedding or displaying windows. [27][28]
Another noted earlier effort was envjs in 2008 from John Resig, which was a simulated browser environment written in JavaScript for the Rhino engine. [29]
See also[edit]
Headless computer
References[edit]
^ “What is a headless browser? “.
^ “Getting Started with Headless Chrome”.
^ a b c Bekerman, Dima (2018-11-28). “Headless Chrome: DevOps Love It, So Do Hackers, Here’s Why | Imperva”. Blog. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ “Firefox 56 release notes”.
^ “Headless mode – browser support”.
^ “Quick Start”.
^ Mueller, John (2009-10-07). “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A proposal for making AJAX crawlable”. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.
^ Rawlings, Matt (2013-11-20). “Headless Browser Botnet Used in 150 hour DDoS attack”. Business 2 Community.
^ Mello Jr., John P. (2014-03-25). “Headless Web Traffic Threatens Internet Economy”.
^ Raywood, Dan (2014-04-01). “Headless browsers: legitimate software that enables attack”. ITProPortal.
^ Mueller, Neal. “Credential stuffing”.
^ Sheth, Himanshu (2020-11-17). “Selenium 4 Is Now W3C Compliant: All You Need To Know”.
^ “GitHub – Playwright”. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
^ “Github – Puppeteer”. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
^ Silva, Francisco (2019-05-29). “From capybara-webkit to Headless Chrome and ChromeDriver”. Blog | Imaginary Cloud. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ Bintz, John. “jasmine-headless-webkit — The fastest way to run your Jasmine specs! “. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ “JSDOM at GitHub – Pretending to be a visual browser”. Retrieved 2021-04-18.
^ “assaf/zombie”. GitHub.
^ “ヘルペスが口や目からうつる？感染した時の症状と病院の治療方法とは”.. Archived from the original on 2015-02-23. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
^ “JavaScriptMVC – EnvJS”.
^ Mike Bowler. “HtmlUnit – Welcome to HtmlUnit”.
^ “Platform (Vaadin 7. 3. 4 API)”. 6 November 2014.
^ “scrapinghub/splash”. GitHub.
^ “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 2015-05-28. Retrieved 2015-05-28. CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ “Zombie”.
^ SimpleBrowserDotNet/SimpleBrowser, SimpleBrowserDotNet, 2021-02-10, retrieved 2021-02-22
^ DotNetBrowser Examples, TeamDev, 2021-03-12, retrieved 2021-03-12
^ “DotNetBrowser”. TeamDev. 2021-05-05.
^ Resig, John (2008-10-12). “env-js: A pure-JavaScript browser environment” – via GitHub.
Headless browser – Wikipedia
A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.
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. 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. [1]
Since version 59 of Google Chrome[2][3] and version 56[4] of Firefox, [5] there is native support for remote control of the browser. This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS. [6]
Use cases[edit]
The main use cases for headless browsers are:
Test automation in modern web applications (web testing)
Taking screenshots of web pages.
Running automated tests for JavaScript libraries.
Automating interaction of web pages.
Other uses[edit]
Headless browsers are also useful for web scraping. Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use Ajax. [7]
Headless browsers have also been misused in various ways:
Perform DDoS attacks on web sites. [8]
Increase advertisement impressions. [9]
Automate web sites in unintended ways[10] e. g. for credential stuffing. [11]
However, a study of browser traffic in 2018 found no preference by malicious actors for headless browsers. [3] 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 attacks
Usage[edit]
As several major browsers natively support headless mode through APIs, some software exists to perform browser automation through a unified interface. These include:
Selenium WebDriver – a W3C compliant implementation of WebDriver[12]
Playwright – a library to automate Chromium, Firefox and WebKit[13]
Puppeteer – a library to automate Chrome[14]
Test Automation[edit]
Some test automation software and frameworks include headless browsers as part of their testing apparati. [3]
Capybara uses headless browsing, either via WebKit or Headless Chrome to mimic user behavior in its testing protocols. [15]
Jasmine uses Selenium by default, but can use WebKit or Headless Chrome, to run browser tests. [16]
Alternatives[edit]
Another approach is to use software that provides browser APIs. For example, Deno provides browser APIs as part of its design. For, jsdom[17] is the most complete provider. 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. They usually perform faster than full browsers, but are unable to correctly interpret many popular websites. [18][19][20]
Another is HtmlUnit, a headless browser written in Java. HtmlUnit uses the Rhino engine to provide JavaScript and Ajax support as well as partial rendering capability. [21][22]
List of headless browsers[edit]
These are various software that provide headless browser APIs.
Splash is a headless web browser written in Python using the WebKit layout engine via Qt. It has an HTTP API, Lua scripting support and a built-in IPython (Jupyter)-based IDE. Development started at ScrapingHub in 2013; it is partially funded by DARPA. [23][24]
is a simulated browser environment for [25]
SimpleBrowser is a headless web browser written in C# supporting Standard 2. 0[26]
DotNetBrowser is a proprietary Chromium-based library that provides the off-screen rendering mode and can be used without embedding or displaying windows. [27][28]
Another noted earlier effort was envjs in 2008 from John Resig, which was a simulated browser environment written in JavaScript for the Rhino engine. [29]
See also[edit]
Headless computer
References[edit]
^ “What is a headless browser? “.
^ “Getting Started with Headless Chrome”.
^ a b c Bekerman, Dima (2018-11-28). “Headless Chrome: DevOps Love It, So Do Hackers, Here’s Why | Imperva”. Blog. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ “Firefox 56 release notes”.
^ “Headless mode – browser support”.
^ “Quick Start”.
^ Mueller, John (2009-10-07). “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: A proposal for making AJAX crawlable”. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog.
^ Rawlings, Matt (2013-11-20). “Headless Browser Botnet Used in 150 hour DDoS attack”. Business 2 Community.
^ Mello Jr., John P. (2014-03-25). “Headless Web Traffic Threatens Internet Economy”.
^ Raywood, Dan (2014-04-01). “Headless browsers: legitimate software that enables attack”. ITProPortal.
^ Mueller, Neal. “Credential stuffing”.
^ Sheth, Himanshu (2020-11-17). “Selenium 4 Is Now W3C Compliant: All You Need To Know”.
^ “GitHub – Playwright”. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
^ “Github – Puppeteer”. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
^ Silva, Francisco (2019-05-29). “From capybara-webkit to Headless Chrome and ChromeDriver”. Blog | Imaginary Cloud. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ Bintz, John. “jasmine-headless-webkit — The fastest way to run your Jasmine specs! “. Retrieved 2021-02-22.
^ “JSDOM at GitHub – Pretending to be a visual browser”. Retrieved 2021-04-18.
^ “assaf/zombie”. GitHub.
^ “ヘルペスが口や目からうつる？感染した時の症状と病院の治療方法とは”.. Archived from the original on 2015-02-23. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
^ “JavaScriptMVC – EnvJS”.
^ Mike Bowler. “HtmlUnit – Welcome to HtmlUnit”.
^ “Platform (Vaadin 7. 3. 4 API)”. 6 November 2014.
^ “scrapinghub/splash”. GitHub.
^ “Archived copy”. Archived from the original on 2015-05-28. Retrieved 2015-05-28. CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ “Zombie”.
^ SimpleBrowserDotNet/SimpleBrowser, SimpleBrowserDotNet, 2021-02-10, retrieved 2021-02-22
^ DotNetBrowser Examples, TeamDev, 2021-03-12, retrieved 2021-03-12
^ “DotNetBrowser”. TeamDev. 2021-05-05.
^ Resig, John (2008-10-12). “env-js: A pure-JavaScript browser environment” – via GitHub.
Headless Browser Testing 101 | Sauce Labs
Headless browsers are gaining in popularity as a viable option for testing web apps. However, when determining your test strategy, it’s important to understand how headless browsers can help improve your efforts, and where they might hinder them.
This article explains what headless browser testing is and which use cases it support. It also identifies the limitations of headless browser testing, and discusses situations in which you may not want to use it.
What Is a Headless Browser?
“Headless browser” is a funny-sounding term that refers to something that software test engineers use all the time: a web browser that is not configured with a Graphical User Interface.
A headless browser is a type of software that can access webpages but does not show them to the user and can pipe the content of the webpages to another program. Unlike a normal browser, nothing will appear on the screen when you start up a headless browser, since the programs run at the backend.
Like a normal browser, a headless browser can parse and interpret webpages (although behaviors can differ between different browser implementations), so it can provide a real browser context without any of the memory and speed costs of running a full-fledged one with a GUI. For example, a headless browser should be capable of parsing JavaScript, clicking on links, coping with any downloads, etc. Executing a headless browser typically means doing so via a command line interface or using network communication.
Google Chrome and Firefox both have versions of their web browser with a headless option. Other browser options that offer some form of a headless implementation include: HtmlUnit, TrifleJS, Splash, and SimpleBrowser.
Headless browsers may not be very useful for surfing the Web, but they are a great tool for testing. Here are some things you might want to know about headless browser testing and the advantages and disadvantages of leveraging it for your testing needs.
Headless Browser Testing: How Can It Be Useful?
Automation
Since headless browsers can provide automated control of webpages, they can be used for automating tasks, scripts, and User Interface tests against a browser without the need for starting up the User Interface of the browser. Webpage interactions can be automated such as form submissions, keyboard inputs, mouse clicks, etc. You can also run automated tests for JavaScript libraries. Headless browser testing can enable up-to-date automated tests in a browser environment.
Layout Testing
Headless browser testing can facilitate a lot of layout checks since headless implementations can render and interpret HTML and CSS like a real browser. This means that it is possible to test style elements such as page layouts (e. g. determining the default width of the page, the coordinates of where an element is), color selection for any elements, font used, etc. It can also test for JavaScript and AJAX execution. You can even automate screen captures for layout checks.
Data Extraction
A full instance of a browser would be overkill if you just want to perform website scraping and data extraction. You may not necessarily want to start up a website, go to it, and scrape it. It is much easier and quicker to navigate to a website headlessly, scrape for data, and use the results to test multiple webpages as part of a quality control effort.
Performance
Headless browsers are your friend if performance is critical. They are faster than real browsers since they do not come with all the overhead of starting up a browser GUI, and this equates to quicker results for your tests. For your developers, this means a lot of time saved when they just want to perform quick and small smoke tests where the UI is irrelevant (i. e., “Can I log into the application? ” or “Is SSL enabled? ”). Being able to perform non-exhaustive tasks via the command line without the need to manually refresh a page or start a browser can save a lot of effort. Keep in mind that the overall performance still depends on the actual tests and the system being tested.
Other Uses
Here are some other use cases that can be leveraged with headless browser testing:
Running tests on machines without a Graphical User Interface
Generating screenshots and PDFs of webpages
Monitoring network application performance
Capturing a timeline trace of a website for performance diagnosis
Simulating multiple browsers on a single machine without the resource hog
Limitations of Headless Browser Testing
As illustrated above, many things that can be tested manually in a real browser can be tested using a headless implementation, but you cannot actually use it for all your browser testing needs, and you should perform testing on real browsers most of the time.
At the end of the day, your end users are not using a headless browser, and so you do not want to focus on bugs that only happen in headless mode. In order to test for user experience and do a functional test, you need to mimic a real user and get precise feedback on what they will actually experience on the website. You want to observe the actual behavior and interaction between an end user and the browser.
Sometimes it is necessary to see your test run on a real browser. This can often be an easy and good debugging technique. If you need to do a lot of browser debugging, this can be challenging in headless mode. A headless browser is a different browser, and tests can catch bugs and throw errors that won’t occur on a real browser.
Conclusion
Automated headless browser testing is great for when you need fast feedback on components of you application. They are quick to set up, and can ensure that snippets of code are working with the end-to-end experience. Headless testing early on in the pipeline, for example, on every pull request, can help deliver instant feedback to developers before committing code to the master branch. However, headless browsers can be limiting when performing full UI tests, as it won’t interact with the browser the way your users would. In addition, headless browsers can be limiting if you want to test on the full variety of browser and OS combination to ensure coverage. Finally, debugging tools such as video validation and live (manual) testing cannot be accessed with headless. Therefore, a sound testing strategy should include a mix of both types of browsers, as they offer both QA and development the infrastructure they need to test quickly and reliably.
UPDATE: Sauce Labs has released an industry first, cloud-based headless testing platform – Sauce Headless. Learn more about the product, and how to get started, on the Sauce Headless page.
Daisy Tsang is a Software Developer currently based in Berlin. She has worked at companies in Canada and Germany in the past few years, loves learning about new technologies, and is particularly interested in the open-source space. Her non-technical interests include photography, knitting, baking, and learning new natural languages.
Frequently Asked Questions about headless browser
What is headless browser example?
A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface. … Since version 59 of Google Chrome and version 56 of Firefox, there is native support for remote control of the browser. This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS.
Why do we use headless browser?
Since headless browsers can provide automated control of webpages, they can be used for automating tasks, scripts, and User Interface tests against a browser without the need for starting up the User Interface of the browser. … Headless browser testing can enable up-to-date automated tests in a browser environment.May 17, 2018
What is a headless Chrome browser?
Headless mode is a functionality that allows the execution of a full version of the latest Chrome browser while controlling it programmatically. It can be used on servers without dedicated graphics or display, meaning that it runs without its “head”, the Graphical User Interface (GUI).Nov 28, 2018
