@licoded/puppeteer-evaluate2 v1.0.0

puppeteer-evaluate2

Easily create a js bundle for your puppeteer evaluate code.

Install

npm install --save puppeteer-evaluate2@beta

Why?

Puppeteer stringifies all code that should be executed via the evaluate method. This means it loses all information about closures etc.

This simple code will already fail at runtime:

  const message = "hello world";
  await page.evaluate(() => console.log(message));

The message closure will not be available when the evaluate code is executed on the browser.

puppeteer-evaluate2 solves this by creating a js bundle on the fly. In fact it is using webpack to create a bundle in memory, on the fly, that is then sent to the browser.

All you need to do is pass in your puppeteer page instance and the path to your entry js file:

Usage

import { evaluate2 } from "puppeteer-evaluate2";

(async () => {
    //normale puppeteer usage...
    const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: true});
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    //...

    //easily evaluate separate file "code.js"
    //will throw if file is not found/on compile errors
    await evaluate2(page, "./code.js");

    //...
    await browser.close();
})();

The entry js file must export a default function:

//code.js
export default function() {
    //all your code
}

Now you can nicely structure your code into several files, puppeteer-evaluate2 will make sure that it gets included and is available:

//code.js
import { foo } from "./util";

export default function() {
    //foo will be available and ready to use
}

In fact you can import node modules as well:

//code.js
export default function() {
    const chunk = require("lodash/chunk");

    return chunk([1, 2, 3, 4], 2);
}

If you want to return stuff, just return it :smirk:

Note that return values will still get serialized, like they normally would with the built in evaluate method. This is a hard limitation by puppeteer itself. There's nothing that could be done here.

//code.js
export default function() {
    return Array.from(document.getElementsByTagName("div")).length;
}

const numDivs = await evaluate2(page, "./code.js");
console.log(`Found ${numDivs} divs`)

Todo

• TypeScript support
• JSX support?