Headless Chrome

Supported versions

Grid	Dedicated
73	None available

Relationship

The format exposed in the $PLATFORM_RELATIONSHIPS environment variable:

{
    "service": "headless",
    "ip": "169.254.73.96",
    "hostname": "3rxha4e2w4yv36lqlypy7qlkza.headless.service._.eu-3.platformsh.site",
    "cluster": "moqwtrvgc63mo-master-7rqtwti",
    "host": "headless.internal",
    "rel": "http",
    "scheme": "http",
    "type": "chrome-headless:73",
    "port": 9222
}

Requirements

Puppeteer requires at least Node.js version 6.4.0, while using the async and await examples below requires Node 7.6.0 or greater.

Using the Platform.sh Config Reader library requires Node.js 10 or later.

Other languages

It will be necessary to upgrade the version of Node.js in other language containers before using Puppeteer. You can use Node Version Manager or NVM to change or update the version available in your application container by following the instructions in the Alternate Node.js install documentation.

Usage example

In your .platform/services.yaml:

headlessbrowser:
    type: chrome-headless:73

In your .platform.app.yaml:

relationships:
    chromeheadlessbrowser: "headlessbrowser:http"

Note:

You will need to use the chrome-headless type when defining the service

# .platform/services.yaml
service_name:
    type: chrome-headless:version

and the endpoint http when defining the relationship

# .platform.app.yaml
relationships:
    relationship_name: “service_name:http”

Your service_name and relationship_name are defined by you, but we recommend making them distinct from each other.

After configuration, include Puppeteer as a dependency in your package.json:

{
  "dependencies": {
    "puppeteer": "^1.14.0"
  }
}

Using the Node.js Config Reader library, you can retrieve formatted credentials for connecting to headless Chrome with Puppeteer:

const platformsh = require('platformsh-config');

let config = platformsh.config();
const credentials = config.credentials('chromeheadlessbrowser');

and use them to define the browserURL parameter of puppeteer.connect() within an async function:

exports.takeScreenshot = async function (url) {
    try {
        // Connect to chrome-headless using pre-formatted puppeteer credentials
        const formattedURL = config.formattedCredentials('chromeheadlessbrowser', 'puppeteer');
        const browser = await puppeteer.connect({browserURL: formattedURL});

        ...

        return browser

    } catch (error) {
        console.error({ error }, 'Something happened!');
        browser.close();
    }
};

Puppeteer allows your application to create screenshots, emulate a mobile device, generate PDFs, and much more.

You can find some useful examples of using headless Chrome and Puppeteer on Platform.sh on the Community Portal: