Headless Chrome Beginner - Windows XAMPP PHP

[Kev]

Hi, I'm a complete beginner to headless browsing and looking for advice on how to start. Most of my developing is on windows using xampp and php with a bit of javascript thrown in. Can I use headless chrome on this setup or do I need something different. If so what? Could someone give me advice on what a beginner needs as a startup package and if what I have already is adequate. Thank you in advance.

[Eric Seckler]

Hi Kev,

You can point Headless Chrome at any web site, be a local one or one in the WWW. Loading a site from you local xampp should work just as it does in desktop chrome.

Cheers,

Eric

On Wed, 28 Mar 2018, 23:17 Kev, <nze...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi, I'm a complete beginner to headless browsing and looking for advice on how to start. Most of my developing is on windows using xampp and php with a bit of javascript thrown in. Can I use headless chrome on this setup or do I need something different. If so what? Could someone give me advice on what a beginner needs as a startup package and if what I have already is adequate. Thank you in advance.

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[Kev]

Thanks Eric for your reply. I've been asked why I want to do this.

I have been using cURL to login to our suppliers websites and check product updates. I have struck a few that have been heavily javascript generated and I cannot use cURL to login. I'm looking for a solution. I was going to try phantomjs but see that it has been deprecated and headless chrome is now recommended. Headless browsers are completely new  to me. I don't know if I can do this with chrome or whether I'm the right forum to be asking for help. Any help or guidance is appreciated as most that have read involves puppeteer, selenium and nodejs which I have no experience in. 

I have managed to open a chrome browser using php exec() but cannot seem to get it open in headless mode using "C:/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe --enable-logging --headless --disable-gpu --dump-dom" run scripts or save files.

I think I have missed something fundamental but don't know what.

Kev

[PhistucK]

Did you check the log file?

It should be located in your user data directory with the name, "chrome_debug.log".

☆PhistucK

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[Kev]

I can't find this log file "chrome_debug.log" anywhere on my computer.

[PhistucK]

When PHP supposedly executes Chrome, do you see chrome.exe in the Windows Task Manager (or Sysinternals Process Explorer), even for a split second?

If not, then I guess PHP cannot even execute it and it sounds like a PHP issue, which is off topic.

☆PhistucK

On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 10:20 AM, Kev <nze...@gmail.com> wrote:

I can't find this log file "chrome_debug.log" anywhere on my computer.

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