serverless-chrome/lambda

Standalone package to run Headless Chrome on AWS Lambda's Node.js (6.10+) runtime.

Contents

1. Installation
2. Setup
3. Local Development
4. Framework Plugins
5. Specifying Chromium Channel

Installation

Install with yarn:

yarn add @serverless-chrome/lambda

Install with npm:

npm install --save @serverless-chrome/lambda

If you wish to develop locally, you also need to install chrome-launcher:

npm install --save-dev chrome-launcher

Setup

Use in your AWS Lambda function. Requires Node 6.10.

const launchChrome = require('@serverless-chrome/lambda')
const CDP = require('chrome-remote-interface')

module.exports.handler = function handler (event, context, callback) {
  launchChrome({
    flags: ['--window-size=1280,1696', '--hide-scrollbars']
  })
  .then((chrome) => {
    // Chrome is now running on localhost:9222

    CDP.Version()
      .then((versionInfo) => {
        callback(null, {
          versionInfo,
        })
      })
      .catch((error) => {
        callback(error)
      })
  })
  // Chrome didn't launch correctly 😢
  .catch(callback)
}

Local Development

Local development is supported. In a non-lambda environment, the package will use chrome-launcher to launch a locally installed Chrome. You can also pass your own chromePath:

launchChrome({ chromePath: '/my/local/chrome/path' })

Command line flags (or "switches")

The behavior of Chrome does vary between platforms. It may be necessary to experiment with flags to get the results you desire. On Lambda default flags are used, but in development no default flags are used.

The package has zero external dependencies required for inclusion in your Lambda function's package.

Framework Plugins

There are plugins which bundle this package for easy deployment available for the following "serverless" frameworks:

• serverless-plugin-chrome

Specifying Chromium Channel

This package will use the latest stable-channel build of Headless Chromium for AWS Lambda. To select a different channel (beta or dev), export either an environment variable NPM_CONFIG_CHROMIUM_CHANNEL or add chromiumChannel to the config section of your package.json:

Your package.json:

{
  "name": "my-cool-project",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "config": {
    "chromiumChannel": "dev"  <-- here
  },
  "scripts": {

  },
  "description": {

  }
}

Note: the dev channel is almost canary, so use dev if you're looking for the Canary channel.

You can skip download entirely with NPM_CONFIG_SERVERLESS_CHROME_SKIP_DOWNLOAD or setting skip_download in the config section of your package.json

Caution: We test and develop features against the stable channel. Using the beta or dev channel versions of Chromium may lead to unexpected results, especially in relation to the Chrome DevTools Protocol (which is used by tools like Chromeless and Puppeteer).