When I run unit tests with puppeteer, my smartcard (observed with a YubiKey or Nitrokey) gets accessed; you can see the light blink. I am using that smart card in my host system, but do not want to access it from puppeteer.
This slows down the tests, and is not desirable in general; the tests should certainly not use my smartcard.
How can I prevent puppeteer/chromium from accessing smartcards? I am fine with a Linux-only solution.
Related
I'm using Chrome in headless mode via CDP (Chrome devtools protocol) to do HTML to PDF conversions. Works well but I do not trust Chrome to run forever and want to build a guardian service to monitor its responsiveness and if necessary kill the process and relaunch it.
What would be a good indicator of health? What I'm looking for is a low overhead test I can perform at fairly frequent intervals so that the restart latency is minimised.
I could try to perform some kind of CDP command if anyone has a suggestion and a reliable way to determine success.
I can't think of anything else, that's why I've thrown it open for suggestions.
My best suggestion for this case is to use the Target domain. Listening to some of the events that are fired from the target domain will give you some information regarding the state of your browser, such as TargetCrashed.
On top of that, you could use basic domains like Runtime (provides the evaluate method), SystemInfo or Browser to send the browser requests in order to check its health.
With an increasing mobile user base I would like to be able to gauge a baseline for site performance. Typically I can do this using chrome dev tools, checking when DOMContentLoaded finishes, and checking all my javascript tags to make sure they're in acceptable threshholds. How would I go about automating this so I can create performance dashboards?
Maybe phantomjs, selenium can do this? What headless chrome implementation could I use to achieve this.
You can use Lighthouse to capture a variety of performance metrics.
For real user metrics, you can instrument your app however you see fit with the User Timing API.
I'm using the AS3 Timer class to sync data between a Flex Mobile app and a server ideally every 30 mins then send a local (distriqt) Notification to the user when action is required.
However, when the device goes into sleep / hibernate mode it seems to slow down, even stop the Timer. I've tried using a lower interval (5mins) but it still only works intermittently.
This is very hard to test as the behavior is different in debug / run modes.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
Sounds like you might need to change your approach here. Background operation of applications is very different from the foreground.
Your application will run for a little while (depending on the current device memory load among other things) and will then enter a suspended mode, mainly to preserve the application's memory state.
There are some background mode exceptions to this, such as audio playback and location updates, however if you aren't performing these then Apple will most likely reject your application as part of the review process.
You can also investigate the executeInBackground flag on the NativeApplication. This allows a long running task to execute in the background, however this does not guarantee that the application would run in the background continuously.
You can read more here: http://blogs.adobe.com/airodynamics/2012/05/04/air-ios-background-behavior/
UIBackgroundModes: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/iPhoneOSKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009252-SW22
I've built a web server using Chrome Packaged Apps. The problem I see repeatedly is that chrome.socket.accept() and chrome.socket.write() don't invoke their callback functions. It usually works more or less reliably if request rate is less than 1 request per seconds. If I go above that, then I start seeing errors or missing callbacks.
I did similar tests with sample "webserver" app build by Google (https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-app-samples/tree/master/webserver). It has the same problem. It usually takes less than 100 requests before web server stops responding. The easiest way to reproduce the problem is to use Chrome browser as a client and hold F5 key for few seconds.
It would be desirable to have a sample app that demonstrates how to build reliable web server using chrome.socket. So far I tried several different workarounds for monitoring the situation from the app itself and restarting socket when socket stops working, but it's not easy because there is no reliable way to check the status of the connection or status of the last operation when callback is not fired. I tried to use getInfo() method, but it always returns "connected=true" regardless of the situation.
I saw this on Windows 7 and Chrome OS (Chromebook).
Just an update on this. According to this the issue is now fixed.
There are still other problems with the sample web server application. I noticed that I could make the sample app lock up by holding down Ctrl-R in the browser. I wrote a more robust one that you can use here: https://github.com/kzahel/web-server-chrome
While reading the QTKit Application Programming Guide I came across the term 'headless environments' - what does this mean? Here is the passage:
...including applications with a GUI and tools intended to run in a “headless” environment. For example, you can use the framework to write command-line tools that manipulate QuickTime movie files.
"Headless" in this context simply means without a graphical display. (i.e.: Console based.)
Many servers are "headless" and are administered over SSH for example.
Headless means that the application is running without a graphical user interface (GUI) and sometimes without user interface at all.
There are similar terms for this, which are used in slightly different context and usage. Here are some examples.
Headless / Ghost / Phantom
This term is rather used for heavy weight clients. The idea is to run a client in a non-graphical mode, with a command line for example. The client will then run until its task is finished or will interact with the user through a prompt.
Eclipse for instance can be run in headless mode. This mode comes in handy when it comes to running jobs in background, or in a build factory.
For example, you can run Eclipse in graphic mode to install plugins. This is OK if you just do it for yourself. However, if you're packaging Eclipse to be used by the devs of a large company and want to keep up with all the updates, you probably want to find a more reproducible, automatic easier way.
That's when the headless mode comes in: you may run Eclipse in command line with parameters that indicate which plugins to install.
The nice thing about this method is that it can be integrated in a build factory!
Faceless
This term is rather used for larger scale application. It's been coined in by UX designers. A faceless app interacts with users in a manner that is traditionally dedicated to human users, like mails, SMS, phone... but NOT a GUI.
For example, some companies use SMS as an entry point to dialog with users: the user sends a SMS containing a request to a certain number. This triggers automated services to run and reply to the user.
It's a nice user experience, because one can do some errands from one's telephone. You don't necessarily need to have an internet connection, and the interaction with the app is asynchronous.
On the back-end side, the service can decide that it does not understand the user's request and get out of the automated mode. The user enters then in an interactive mode with a human operator without changing his communication tool.
You most likely know what a browser is. Now take away the GUI, and you have what’s called a headless browser. Headless browsers can do all of the same things that normal browsers do, but faster. They’re great for automating and testing web pages programmatically.
Headless can be referred in terms of a browser or a program that doesn't require a GUI. Not really useful for a general person to view and only to pass the info in the form of code to another program.
So why one uses a Headless program?
Simply because it improves the speed and performance and is available for all user, including those that have access to the graphic card. Allows testing browserless setups and helps you multitask.
Guide to Headless Browser
What is GUI ?
In software development it is an architectural design that completely separates the backend from the front end. The front end, gui, or UI is a stand alone piece and communicates to the backend through an API. This allows for a multi server architecture, flexibility in software stack and performance optimization.