Quick Start

This instruction assumes that PhantomJS is installed and its executable is place somewhere in the PATH.

All of the examples given here are available in the code repository under the sub-directory examples/. For each example, there are two version for each JavaScript and CoffeeScript.

You are also recommend to explore the use of PhantomJS for page automation, network monitoring, screen capture, and headless testing.

Hello, World!

Create a new text file that contains the following two lines:

console.log('Hello, world!');
phantom.exit();

Save it as hello.js and the run it:

phantomjs hello.js

The output is:

Hello, world!

In the first line, console.log will print the passed string to the terminal. In the second line, phantom.exit terminates the execution.

It is very important to call phantom.exit at some point in the script, otherwise PhantomJS will not be terminated at all.

Page Loading

A web page can be loaded, analyzed, and rendered by creating a web page object.

The following script demonstrates the simplest use of page object. It loads Google homepage and then save it as an image, google.png.

var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open('http://google.com', function () {
    page.render('google.png');
    phantom.exit();
});

Because of its rendering features, PhantomJS can be used to capture web pages, essentially taking a screenshot of the contents.

The following loadspeed.js script loads a specified URL (do not forget the http protocol) and measures the time it takes to load it.

var page = require('webpage').create(),
    t, address;

if (phantom.args.length === 0) {
    console.log('Usage: loadspeed.js <some URL>');
    phantom.exit();
} else {
    t = Date.now();
    address = phantom.args[0];
    page.open(address, function (status) {
        if (status !== 'success') {
            console.log('FAIL to load the address');
        } else {
            t = Date.now() - t;
            console.log('Loading time ' + t + ' msec');
        }
        phantom.exit();
    });
}

Run the script with the command:

phantomjs loadspeed.js http://www.google.com

It outputs something like:

Loading http://www.google.com Loading time 719 msec

Code Evaluation

To evaluate JavaScript or CoffeeScript code in the context of the web page, use evaluate() function. The execution is "sandboxed", there is no way for the code to access any JavaScript objects and variables outside its own page context. An object can be returned from evaluate(), however it is limited to simple objects and can't contain functions or closures.

Here is an example to show the title of a web page:

var page = require('webpage').create();
page.open(url, function (status) {
    var title = page.evaluate(function () {
        return document.title;
    });
    console.log('Page title is ' + title);
});

Any console message from a web page, including from the code inside evaluate(), will not be displayed by default. To override this behavior, use the onConsoleMessage callback. The previous example can be rewritten to:

var page = require('webpage').create();
page.onConsoleMessage = function (msg) {
    console.log('Page title is ' + msg);
};
page.open(url, function (status) {
    page.evaluate(function () {
        console.log(document.title);
    });
});

Since the script is executed as if it is running on a web browser, standard DOM scripting and CSS selectors work just fine. It makes PhantomJS suitable to carry out various page automation tasks.