Rendered HTML output using nodejs

Question

We have a requirement to load the input HTML string into browser kind of environment, run the html (which should internally run all the inline scripts i.e there are a few ajax calls) and then provide the rendered HTML as output.

Is this possible with node?

Is there any node module which we can use for this purpose.

Please help in this regard.

Answer 1

Sound like you looking for headless browser for NodeJS. see a list here http://github.com/dhamaniasad/HeadlessBrowsers

This is example from CasperJS

You can install as Node module

npm install -g casperjs

And

var casper = require('casper').create();

casper.start('http://www.google.fr/', function() {
    this.echo(this.getHTML());
});

casper.run();

Run

casperjs app.js

For NODEJS runtime

Try Nightmare

Install

npm install nightmare

code

var Nightmare = require('nightmare');
var nightmare = Nightmare({ show: false });

nightmare.goto("http://www.google.com")
.evaluate(function(){
    return document.body.outerHTML;
})
.end()
.then(function (result) {
        console.log(result)
 })

Run

nodejs app.js