Headless Chrome Node API and Puppeteer installation - puppeteer

Question

Throughout the process of installation chrome headless on a clean ubuntu 18.04 i faced quite a few issues. The setup guide on github is not sufficient for a clean ubuntu 18.04
The following are some errors and answer / solutions to setting up headless chrome an alternative to phantomjs.
Error 1
(node:23835) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Chromium revision is not downloaded. Run "npm install" or "yarn install"
at Launcher.launch owlcommand.com /puppeteer/node_modules/puppeteer/lib/Launcher.js:112:15)
at <anonymous>
(node:23835) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection. This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block, or by rejecting a promise which was not handled with .catch(). (rejection id: 1)
(node:23835) [DEP0018] DeprecationWarning: Unhandled promise rejections are deprecated. In the future, promise rejections that are not handled will terminate the Node.js process with a non-zero exit code.
Error 2
(node:25272) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Failed to launch chrome!
owlcommand.com /puppeteer/node_modules/puppeteer/.local-chromium/linux-594312/chrome-linux/chrome: error while loading shared libraries: libX11-xcb.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Answer 1

Based on https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer
You only have to run the following command in Ubuntu 18.04
npm i puppeteer
Unfortunately this is not enough.
You will require the following Dependencies
sudo apt-get install gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libatk-bridge2.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget
After which if you run it as per their example , you will receive an error
(node:28469) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Failed to launch chrome!
[1025/150325.817887:ERROR:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(89)] Running as root without --no-sandbox is not supported. See https://crbug.com/638180.
The solution to this is
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({args: ['--no-sandbox']});
Adding --no-sandbox
It will work accordingly then. The full working source code is below
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({args: ['--no-sandbox']});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('http://owlcommand.com');
await page.screenshot({path: 'example.png'});
await browser.close();
})();
Solution to puppeteer#1.9.0~install: cannot run in wd %s %s (wd=%s)
npm install --unsafe-perm
Screenshot Size
The default is really small, if the page you are testing is responsive, you can test it with different viewport settings. You can change its dimensions via the setViewport method.
await page.setViewport({
width: 1600,
height: 1000
});
Update for Latest Puppeteer (Aug 2020)
sudo apt-get install libgbm1 (Required)

Answer 2

Update Nov-18: You don't require the --no-sandbox flag any longer, you should use the headless:false property in the object you send to .launch()
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
headless: false,
slowMo: 80,
args: ['--window-size=1920,1080']
});
Also make sure you have all the required debian dependencies installed:
sudo apt-get install gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget

Answer 3

and also install libgbm1
"puppeteer": "^3.1.0"
full cmd is
apt-get update && apt-get install -y gconf-service libasound2 libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libcups2 libdbus-1-3 libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libgbm1 libgcc1 libgconf-2-4 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libnspr4 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libx11-xcb1 libxcb1 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ca-certificates fonts-liberation libappindicator1 libnss3 lsb-release xdg-utils wget

Answer 4

I had that kind of problem only when I tried to run a node application on Docker, so based on the answers given, I finally got it working with that Dockerfile:
FROM node:12
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json /app/
RUN apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y \
gconf-service \
libasound2 \
libatk1.0-0 \
libatk-bridge2.0-0 \
libc6 \
libcairo2 \
libcups2 \
libdbus-1-3 \
libexpat1 \
libfontconfig1 \
libgcc1 \
libgconf-2-4 \
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 \
libglib2.0-0 \
libgtk-3-0 \
libnspr4 \
libpango-1.0-0 \
libpangocairo-1.0-0 \
libstdc++6 \
libx11-6 \
libx11-xcb1 \
libxcb1 \
libxcomposite1 \
libxcursor1 \
libxdamage1 \
libxext6 \
libxfixes3 \
libxi6 \
libxrandr2 \
libxrender1 \
libxss1 \
libxtst6 \
ca-certificates \
fonts-liberation \
libappindicator1 \
libnss3 \
lsb-release \
xdg-utils \
wget \
&& npm i puppeteer
COPY . /app
CMD [ "node", "app.js" ]
I changed the launch code as mentioned as well, it worked just fine that way:
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({args: ['--no-sandbox']});

Answer 5

I was facing same problem on Windows. I made asar as false and it got successful.
"build": { "asar":false, }

Answer 6

I was working with fork of buildkite/puppeteer and found that with new Chrome (85) I had to install libxss1 instead of libgbm1 (as suggested in other comments)
So it looks like this at the moment (link):
FROM node:12.18.3-buster-slim#sha256:dd6aa3ed10af4374b88f8a6624aeee7522772bb08e8dd5e917ff729d1d3c3a4f
RUN apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y git \
&& apt-get update \
&& apt-get install -y libxss1 wget gnupg ca-certificates \
&& wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add - \
&& sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' \
&& apt-get update \
# We install Chrome to get all the OS level dependencies, but Chrome itself
# is not actually used as it's packaged in the node puppeteer library.
# Alternatively, we could could include the entire dep list ourselves
# (https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/blob/master/docs/troubleshooting.md#chrome-headless-doesnt-launch-on-unix)
# but that seems too easy to get out of date.
&& apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/* \
&& wget --quiet https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vishnubob/wait-for-it/master/wait-for-it.sh -O /usr/sbin/wait-for-it.sh \
&& chmod +x /usr/sbin/wait-for-it.sh