SpookyJS

Drive CasperJS from Node.js.

Note: If you are simply looking to control Phantom from Node and don't need Casper's API, have a look at PhantomJS 1.8, which has native WebDriver support.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 0.8
• PhantomJS >= 1.9
• CasperJS >= 1.0

SpookyJS is available from npm.

$ npm install spooky

Usage

Read about how Spooky works in the documentation. API documentation and examples coming soon.

Quickstart

try {
    var Spooky = require('spooky');
} catch (e) {
    var Spooky = require('../lib/spooky');
}

var spooky = new Spooky({
        child: {
            transport: 'http'
        },
        casper: {
            logLevel: 'debug',
            verbose: true
        }
    }, function (err) {
        if (err) {
            e = new Error('Failed to initialize SpookyJS');
            e.details = err;
            throw e;
        }

        spooky.start(
            'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spooky_the_Tuff_Little_Ghost');
        spooky.then(function () {
            this.emit('hello', 'Hello, from ' + this.evaluate(function () {
                return document.title;
            }));
        });
        spooky.run();
    });

spooky.on('error', function (e, stack) {
    console.error(e);

    if (stack) {
        console.log(stack);
    }
});

/*
// Uncomment this block to see all of the things Casper has to say.
// There are a lot.
// He has opinions.
spooky.on('console', function (line) {
    console.log(line);
});
*/

spooky.on('hello', function (greeting) {
    console.log(greeting);
});

spooky.on('log', function (log) {
    if (log.space === 'remote') {
        console.log(log.message.replace(/ \- .*/, ''));
    }
});

A minimal example can be found in the repo under examples. Run it like this in a cloned repo:

$ node examples/hello.js

Run it like this if you installed Spooky via npm:

$ node node_modules/spooky/examples/hello.js

A small example Cucumber.js test suite can be found in the repo under examples/cucumber. To run the suite:

$ make cucumber.js

You may change the port that the fixture server runs on by setting the TEST_PORT make parameter.

See the tests for an example of how to use SpookyJS with Mocha.

Known issues

Spooky's stdio transport reportedly does not work on Windows and Ubuntu.

The http transport hangs when using Phantom 1.8 with older versions of CasperJS.

Development

Running the tests

SpookyJS includes a suite of unit tests, driven by Mocha. To run the tests:

$ make test

The following make parameters are supported (defaults are in parentheses):

• TEST_REPORTER the Mocha reporter to use (dot)
• TEST_PORT the port to run the fixture web server on (8080)
• TEST_TIMEOUT threshold in ms to timeout a test (4000)
• TEST_SLOW threshold in ms to say a test is slow (2000)
• TEST_ARGS Additional arguments to pass through to Mocha
• TEST_DEBUG Print debug logging to the console (false)
• TEST_TRANSPORT the Spooky transport to use when running the tests (stdio)

Release Notes

0.2.4

• support CasperJS v1.0.3+ (thanks @rumca and @ucarbehlul)
• use a spec-compliant implementation of Function.prototype.bind
• add options.child.spawnOptions: its value is passed thru as the options argument to child_process.spawn
• serialize function and function tuple values in options.casper
• teach test to throw if Spooky emits an error
• implement withFrame, withPopup, and waitForPopup (thanks @asciidisco)
• use HTTP transport by default in hello example
• fix invalid argument order in RequestStream._onError (Dmitry Menshikov)

0.2.3

• Allow casper restart in stdio server (@kpdecker)
• Fix #51 by correctly inheriting from EventEmitter (thanks @tomchentw)
• Move emit to a module and provide emitting console module

0.2.2

• Node 0.10 support
• use Phantom 1.9's system.stdin for stdio transport
• add phantom.onError handler. Spooky now emits an error event and exits non-zero if an unhandled JS error occurs in the Phantom context.
• add thenClick method (@andresgottlieb)
• fix #28

License

SpookyJS is made available under the MIT License.

Acknowledgements and Attribution

The image tests/fixtures/fail-road.jpeg is the work Fail Road and is copyright (c) 2007 fireflythegreat and made available under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license.