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Nightmare.js vs Puppeteer: What are the differences?
Introduction Here are the key differences between Nightmare.js and Puppeteer, two popular web automation frameworks.
Execution Environment: Nightmare.js runs on top of Electron, a framework that allows building cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies. Puppeteer, on the other hand, is a Node.js library that controls a headless version of Chromium. This means that Puppeteer can be used on various platforms without the need for installing a separate runtime environment like Electron.
API Design: Nightmare.js focuses on providing a high-level API that abstracts away low-level details, making it easier for beginners to use. It aims for a more declarative syntax, allowing users to chain actions in a more readable and fluent manner. Puppeteer, on the other hand, offers a more comprehensive and flexible API, exposing lower-level functions and options for fine-grained control over web automation tasks.
Concurrent Operations: Puppeteer has built-in support for executing multiple tasks concurrently, allowing for more efficient and faster automation. Nightmare.js, on the other hand, runs each task in a sequential manner, which can result in slower execution if there are dependencies between different tasks.
Documentation and Community: Puppeteer is backed by Google, and hence, it has extensive documentation and a large and active community. This means that finding resources, examples, and support is relatively easier with Puppeteer compared to Nightmare.js. Nightmare.js, on the other hand, has a smaller community and a narrower scope of use cases.
Browser Events and Manipulation: Puppeteer provides more extensive control over events and user interactions on a webpage. It allows triggering mouse events, keyboard inputs, and user gestures like scrolling and zooming. Nightmare.js, while also supporting these interactions, may have limitations and may not provide the same level of control for complex user interactions.
Extensibility and Customization: Puppeteer offers more options for extending and customizing its functionality. It allows users to modify the behavior of the browser, intercept network requests, and use Chrome DevTools Protocol directly. Nightmare.js, while providing some extensibility options, may have more limited possibilities for advanced customization.
In summary, while both Nightmare.js and Puppeteer are capable web automation frameworks, Puppeteer offers a more versatile and flexible API, better documentations and larger community support, support for concurrent operations, extensive browser events and manipulation control, and more options for customization.
I am using Node 12 for server scripting and have a function to generate PDF and send it to a browser. Currently, we are using PhantomJS to generate a PDF. Some web post shows that we can achieve PDF generation using Puppeteer. I was a bit confused. Should we move to puppeteerJS? Which one is better with NodeJS for generating PDF?
You better go with puppeteer. It is basically chrome automation tool, written in nodejs. So what you get is PDF, generated by chrome itself. I guess there is hardly better PDF generation tool for the web. Phantomjs is already more or less outdated as technology. It uses some old webkit port that's quite behind in terms of standards and features. It can be replaced with puppeteer for every single task.
I suggest puppeteer to go for. It is simple and easy to set up. Only limitaiton is it can be used only for chrome browser and currently they are looking into expanding into FF. The next thing is Playwright which is just a scale up of Puppeteer. It supports cross browsers.
Pros of Nightmare.js
Pros of Puppeteer
- Very well documented10
- Scriptable web browser10
- Promise based6
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Cons of Nightmare.js
Cons of Puppeteer
- Chrome only10
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