How to install Phantomjs on Ubuntu

How to install Phantomjs on Ubuntu

Phantomjs is free and open source Scripted, headless browser used for automation of web page interaction. Phantomjs in licensed under BSD license and enables the automated navigation, screenshots and user behaviour. The browsing environment of phantomjs is very similar to Safari and Google Chrome. This tutorial explains the installation procedure of phantomjs on Ubuntu.

Installation procedure

To start the installation procedure, first update the system repositories of the target system by running the following command.

root@linuxhelp1:~# apt-get update
Hit:1 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease [102 kB]
Get:3 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease [102 kB]       
Get:4 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease [102 kB]     
Fetched 306 kB in 4s (72.7 kB/s)                           
Reading package lists... Done

Next install some of the required packages for Phantomjs run the below command to install it.

root@linuxhelp1:~# apt-get install build-essential chrpath libssl-dev libxft-dev libfreetype6-dev libfreetype6 libfontconfig1-dev libfontconfig1 -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version (12.1ubuntu2).
build-essential set to manually installed.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  fontconfig-config libexpat1 libexpat1-dev libpng12-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libx11-dev libx11-doc libxau-dev libxcb1-dev libxdmcp-dev
  libxrender-dev x11proto-core-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-dev x11proto-render-dev xorg-sgml-doctools xtrans-dev zlib1g-dev
Suggested packages:
  libxcb-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  chrpath libexpat1-dev libfontconfig1-dev libfreetype6-dev libpng12-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev
.
.
.
Setting up xtrans-dev (1.3.5-1) ...
Setting up libxcb1-dev:amd64 (1.11.1-1ubuntu1) ...
Setting up libx11-dev:amd64 (2:1.6.3-1ubuntu2) ...
Setting up libx11-doc (2:1.6.3-1ubuntu2) ...
Setting up x11proto-render-dev (2:0.11.1-2) ...
Setting up libxrender-dev:amd64 (1:0.9.9-0ubuntu1) ...
Setting up libxft-dev (2.3.2-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu3) ...

The required packages has been installed successfully in the target system. Download the package for phantomjs by executing the below command.

root@linuxhelp1:~# wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
--2017-04-06 15:45:36--  https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
Resolving bitbucket.org (bitbucket.org)... 104.192.143.1, 104.192.143.2, 104.192.143.3, ...
Connecting to bitbucket.org (bitbucket.org)|104.192.143.1|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: https://bbuseruploads.s3.amazonaws.com/fd96ed93-2b32-46a7-9d2b-ecbc0988516a/downloads/396e7977-71fd-4592-8723-495ca4cfa7cc/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2?Signature=hepUPrwrpqp3LOlki5z%2FIlYrHlA%
.
.
.

Once the download process is complete. Extract the package using tar command as shown below.

root@linuxhelp1:~# tar xvjf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 -C /usr/local/share/
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/colorwheel.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/scandir.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/page_events.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/loadspeed.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/injectme.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/render_multi_url.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/server.js
.
.
.
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/postjson.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/run-jasmine2.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/examples/run-jasmine.js
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/README.md
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/LICENSE.BSD
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/third-party.txt
phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/ChangeLog

Now to create softlink for Phantomjs binary file to system bin directory run the following command.

root@linuxhelp1:~# ln -s /usr/local/share/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/

The Phantomjs is installed on the target machine. Use the below command to verify it’ s version.

root@linuxhelp1:~# phantomjs --version
2.1.1

To enter into Phantomjs prompt, use the command “ phantomjs” . After entering into prompt the phantom can be used. To check about Phantomjs version run the following command.

root@linuxhelp1:~# phantomjs
phantomjs>  phantom.version
{
   " major" : 2,
   " minor" : 1,
   " patch" : 1
}

Wasn' t that any easy installation? Phantomjs is a common tool used to run browser based unit tests in headless system like continous integration environment.