headless-browser

Headless Browser with Proxy and Server.

Installation

cargo install chrome_server

Usage

1. Runs the latest browser instance with remote proxy connections and a server that can rewrite json/version for networking.
2. Can spawn and shutdown multiple headless instances manually and automatically on errors.
3. Get CDP ws connections and status (caches values for perf).

The current instance binds chrome to 0.0.0.0 when starting via API.

Use the env variable REMOTE_ADDRESS to change the address of the chrome instance between physical or network.

The application will pass lb health checks when using port 6000 to get the status of the chromium container.

A side loaded application is required to run chromium on a load balancer, one of the main purposes of the server.

The default port is 9223 for chromium and 9222 for the TCP proxy to connect to the instance due to 0.0.0.0 not being exposed on latest HeadlessChrome/131.0.6778.139 and up.

Building without Docker

In order to build without docker set the BUILD_CHROME env var to true.

Mac

If your running locally use the following to start the args with the first param chrome_server '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome'

API

1. POST: fork to start a new chrome instance or use fork/$port with the port to startup the instance ex: curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/fork/9223'.
2. POST: shutdown/$PID to shutdown the instance. ex: curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/shutdown/77057'
3. POST: /json/version get the json info of the chrome instance to connect to web sockets ex: curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/json/version'.

Curl Examples

fork

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/fork'

shutdown

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:6000/shutdown'

/json/version

curl --location --request GET 'http://localhost:6000/json/version' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json'

# example output
{
   "Browser": "HeadlessChrome/131.0.6778.139",
   "Protocol-Version": "1.3",
   "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux aarch64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) HeadlessChrome/131.0.6778.139 Safari/537.36",
   "V8-Version": "13.1.201.16",
   "WebKit-Version": "537.36 (@c35bbcbd7c2775a12a3f320e05ac0022939b1a8a)",
   "webSocketDebuggerUrl": "ws://127.0.0.1:9222/devtools/browser/43e14f5a-6877-4e2f-846e-ab5801f1b6fc"
}

Args

1. The first arg is the chrome application location example linux '/opt/google/chrome/chrome'.
2. The second arg is the chrome address 127.0.0.1.
3. The third arg you can pass in init to auto start chrome on 9222.

Example to start chrome (all params are optional):

chrome_server '/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome' 127.0.0.1 init
# Chrome PID: 87659
# Chrome server at localhost:6000
# DevTools listening on ws://127.0.0.1:9222/devtools/browser/c789f9e0-7f65-495d-baee-243eb454ea15

Docker

You can build this image using the following:

1. Dockerfile (Alpine)
2. Dockerfile.playwright (Playwright Custom Chrome)
3. Dockerfile.headless_shell (Manual)
4. Dockerfile.brave
5. Dockerfile.headless_shell_playwright (Playwright Headless Shell)
6. Dockerfile.xvfb (Virtual Display)
7. Dockerfile.lightpanda

You need to set the env variable passed in as an arg HOSTNAME_OVERRIDE to override the docker container and set it to host.docker.internal.

Manual (WIP)

Use the following to build with docker. Run the command ./build.sh to build chrome on the machine with docker. The build scripts are originally from docker-headless-shell.

ENV Variables

# the chrome path on the OS ex: CHROME_PATH=./chrome-headless-shell/mac_arm-132.0.6834.159/chrome-headless-shell-mac-arm64/chrome-headless-shell
CHROME_PATH=
# the remote address of the chrome intance
REMOTE_ADDRESS=
# use brave browser as default. Set the value to true.
BRAVE_ENABLED=

License

MIT