puppeteer/website/versioned_docs/version-21.7.0/faq.md
release-please[bot] 864012a86d
chore: release main (#11593)
Co-authored-by: release-please[bot] <55107282+release-please[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
2024-01-04 13:39:46 +00:00

195 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

# FAQ
## Q: Who maintains Puppeteer?
The Chrome Browser Automation team maintains the library, but we'd love your help and
expertise on the project! See our
[contributing guide](https://pptr.dev/contributing).
## Q: What is the status of cross-browser support?
Official Firefox support is currently experimental. The ongoing collaboration
with Mozilla aims to support common end-to-end testing use cases, for which
developers expect cross-browser coverage. The Puppeteer team needs input from
users to stabilize Firefox support and to bring missing APIs to our attention.
From Puppeteer v2.1.0 onwards you can specify
[`puppeteer.launch({product: 'firefox'})`](./api/puppeteer.puppeteernode.launch)
to run your Puppeteer scripts in Firefox Nightly, without any additional custom
patches. While
[an older experiment](https://www.npmjs.com/package/puppeteer-firefox) required
a patched version of Firefox,
[the current approach](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Remote) works with “stock”
Firefox.
We will continue to collaborate with other browser vendors to bring Puppeteer
support to browsers such as Safari. This effort includes exploration of a
standard for executing cross-browser commands (instead of relying on the
non-standard DevTools Protocol used by Chrome).
Update 2023-11-17: Puppeteer has experimental support for the new
[WebDriverBiDi](https://w3c.github.io/webdriver-bidi/) protocol that can be used
to automate Firefox. The WebDriver BiDi implementation in Firefox will replace
the current CDP implementation in Firefox in the future. See
https://pptr.dev/webdriver-bidi for more details.
## Q: Does Puppeteer support WebDriver BiDi?
Puppeteer has experimental support for WebDriver BiDi. See https://pptr.dev/webdriver-bidi.
## Q: What are Puppeteers goals and principles?
The goals of the project are:
- Provide a reference implementation that highlights the capabilities of the
[Chrome DevTools](https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/)
and [WebDriver BiDi](https://w3c.github.io/webdriver-bidi/) protocols.
- Grow the adoption of automated cross-browser testing.
- Help dogfood new DevTools Protocol and WebDriver BiDi features...and catch bugs!
- Learn more about the pain points of automated browser testing and help fill
those gaps.
We adapt
[Chromium principles](https://www.chromium.org/developers/core-principles) to
help us drive product decisions:
- **Speed**: Puppeteer has almost zero performance overhead over an automated
page.
- **Security**: Puppeteer operates off-process with respect to the browser, making
it safe to automate potentially malicious pages.
- **Stability**: Puppeteer should not be flaky and should not leak memory.
- **Simplicity**: Puppeteer provides a high-level API thats easy to use,
understand, and debug.
## Q: Is Puppeteer a replacement for Selenium WebDriver?
**No**. Both projects are valuable for very different reasons:
- Selenium WebDriver focuses on cross-browser automation and provides bindings for
multiple languages; Puppeteer is only for JavaScript.
- Puppeteer focuses on Chromium; its value proposition is richer functionality
for Chromium-based browsers.
That said, you **can** use Puppeteer to run tests against Chromium, e.g. using
the community-driven
[jest-puppeteer](https://github.com/smooth-code/jest-puppeteer) or
[Puppeteer's Angular integration](https://pptr.dev/integrations/ng-schematics). While this
probably shouldnt be your only testing solution, it does have a few good points
compared to WebDriver classic:
- Puppeteer requires zero setup and comes bundled with the Chrome version it
works best with, making it
[very easy to start with](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/#getting-started).
- Puppeteer has event-driven architecture, which removes a lot of potential
flakiness. Theres no need for “sleep(1000)” calls in puppeteer scripts.
- Puppeteer exposes browser contexts, making it possible to efficiently
parallelize test execution.
- Puppeteer shines when it comes to debugging: flip the “headless” bit to false,
add “slowMo”, and youll see what the browser is doing. You can even open
Chrome DevTools to inspect the test environment.
## Q: Why doesnt Puppeteer v.XXX work with Chromium v.YYY?
We see Puppeteer as an **indivisible entity** with Chromium. Each version of
Puppeteer bundles a specific version of Chromium **the only** version it is
guaranteed to work with.
This is not an artificial constraint: A lot of work on Puppeteer is actually
taking place in the Chromium repository. Heres a typical story:
- A Puppeteer bug is reported:
https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/issues/2709
- It turned out this is an issue with the DevTools protocol, so were fixing it
in Chromium: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1102154
- Once the upstream fix is landed, we roll updated Chromium into Puppeteer:
https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/pull/2769
## Q: Which Chrome version does Puppeteer use?
Look for the `chrome` entry in
[revisions.ts](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/blob/main/packages/puppeteer-core/src/revisions.ts).
## Q: Which Firefox version does Puppeteer use?
Since Firefox support is experimental, Puppeteer downloads the latest
[Firefox Nightly](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Nightly) when the `PUPPETEER_PRODUCT`
environment variable is set to `firefox`. That's also why the value of `firefox`
in
[revisions.ts](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/blob/main/packages/puppeteer-core/src/revisions.ts)
is `latest` -- Puppeteer isn't tied to a particular Firefox version.
To fetch Firefox Nightly as part of Puppeteer installation:
```bash
PUPPETEER_PRODUCT=firefox npm i puppeteer
```
To download Firefox Nightly into an existing Puppeteer project:
```bash
npx puppeteer browsers install firefox
```
## Q: Whats considered a “Navigation”?
From Puppeteers standpoint, **“navigation” is anything that changes a pages
URL**. Aside from regular navigation where the browser hits the network to fetch
a new document from the web server, this includes
[anchor navigations](https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/single-page.html#scroll-to-fragid)
and [History API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API)
usage.
With this definition of “navigation,” **Puppeteer works seamlessly with
single-page applications.**
## Q: Whats the difference between a “trusted" and "untrusted" input event?
In browsers, input events could be divided into two big groups: trusted vs.
untrusted.
- **Trusted events**: events generated by users interacting with the page, e.g.
using a mouse or keyboard.
- **Untrusted event**: events generated by Web APIs, e.g. `document.createEvent`
or `element.click()` methods.
Websites can distinguish between these two groups:
- using an
[`Event.isTrusted`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event/isTrusted)
event flag
- sniffing for accompanying events. For example, every trusted `'click'` event
is preceded by `'mousedown'` and `'mouseup'` events.
For automation purposes its important to generate trusted events. **All input
events generated with Puppeteer are trusted and fire proper accompanying
events.** If, for some reason, one needs an untrusted event, its always
possible to hop into a page context with `page.evaluate` and generate a fake
event:
```ts
await page.evaluate(() => {
document.querySelector('button[type=submit]').click();
});
```
## Q: Does Puppeteer support media and audio playback?
Puppeteer uses [Chrome for Testing](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/chrome-for-testing/) binaries
by default which ship with properietary codecs support starting from
[M120](https://chromiumdash.appspot.com/commit/12d607016c31ea13579e897740c765be189ed6eb).
## Q: I am having trouble installing / running Puppeteer in my test environment. Where should I look for help?
We have a
[troubleshooting](https://pptr.dev/troubleshooting)
guide for various operating systems that lists the required dependencies.
## Q: I have more questions! Where do I ask?
There are many ways to get help on Puppeteer:
- For questions: [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/puppeteer)
- For bug reports: [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer/issues)
Make sure to search these channels before posting your question.