@extractr-io/puphpeteer NPM

PuPHPeteer

A Puppeteer bridge for PHP, supporting the full API. Based on Rialto, a package to manage Node resources from PHP.

Here are some examples borrowed from Puppeteer's documentation and adapted to PHP's syntax:

Example - navigating to https://example.com and saving a screenshot as example.png:

use ExtractrIo\Puphpeteer\Puppeteer;

$puppeteer = new Puppeteer;
$browser = $puppeteer->launch();

$page = $browser->newPage();
$page->goto('https://example.com');
$page->screenshot(['path' => 'example.png']);

$browser->close();

Example - evaluate a script in the context of the page:

use ExtractrIo\Puphpeteer\Puppeteer;
use ExtractrIo\Rialto\Data\JsFunction;

$puppeteer = new Puppeteer;

$browser = $puppeteer->launch();
$page = $browser->newPage();
$page->goto('https://example.com');

// Get the "viewport" of the page, as reported by the page.
$dimensions = $page->evaluate(JsFunction::create("
    return {
        width: document.documentElement.clientWidth,
        height: document.documentElement.clientHeight,
        deviceScaleFactor: window.devicePixelRatio
    };
"));

printf('Dimensions: %s', print_r($dimensions, true));

$browser->close();

Requirements and installation

This package requires PHP >= 7.1 and Node >= 8.

Install it with these two command lines:

composer require extractr-io/puphpeteer
npm install @extractr-io/puphpeteer

Notable differences between PuPHPeteer and Puppeteer

Puppeteer's class must be instanciated

Instead of requiring Puppeteer:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

You have to instanciate the Puppeteer class:

$puppeteer = new Puppeteer;

This will create a new Node process controlled by PHP.

You can also pass some options to the constructor, see Rialto's documentation.

Note: If you use some timeouts higher than 30 seconds in Puppeteer's API, you will have to set a higher value for the read_timeout option (default: 35):

$puppeteer = new Puppeteer([
    'read_timeout' => 65, // In seconds
]);

$puppeteer->launch()->newPage()->goto($url, [
    'timeout' => 60000, // In milliseconds
]);

No need to use the `await` keyword

With PuPHPeteer, every method call or property getting/setting is synchronous.

Some methods have been aliased

The following methods have been aliased because PHP doesn't support the $ character in method names:

$ => querySelector
$$ => querySelectorAll
$x => querySelectorXPath
$eval => querySelectorEval
$$eval => querySelectorAllEval

Use these aliases just like you would have used the original methods:

$divs = $page->querySelectorAll('div');

Evaluated functions must be created with `JsFunction`

Functions evaluated in the context of the page must be written with the JsFunction class, the body of these functions must be written in JavaScript instead of PHP.

use ExtractrIo\Rialto\Data\JsFunction;

$pageFunction = JsFunction::create(['element'], "
    return element.textContent;
");

Exceptions must be catched with `->tryCatch`

If an error occurs in Node, a Node\FatalException will be thrown and the process closed, you will have to create a new instance of Puppeteer.

To avoid that, you can ask Node to catch these errors by prepending your instruction with ->tryCatch:

use ExtractrIo\Rialto\Exceptions\Node;

try {
    $page->tryCatch->goto('invalid_url');
} catch (Node\Exception $exception) {
    // Handle the exception...
}

Instead, a Node\Exception will be thrown, the Node process will stay alive and usable.