Phantom Driver doesn't work

[matze-berg]

First off all, the use of PhantomInstaller is good. But if you use this, why the driver doesn't use it ???

Solution:
Add to public static function command the following Lines:
$binDir = '';
try {
// try to use the phantominstaller binary
$binDir = \PhantomInstaller\PhantomBinary::DIR.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
} catch (Exception $e) {
}
return $binDir."phantomjs --ignore-ssl-errors=true {$file} {$port} {$additional}";

The next Problem is, the driver will lose the custom Port. So when i set the Port like you did in your example, it will be used for the first port/connection tests, but not for the last ones.

[hkdobrev]

@matnex As it is stated in the documentation:

You would need to have PhantomJS installed and accessible in your PATH. Picks a new port at random so it's possible to have multiple PhantomJS browsers open simultaneously.

- https://github.com/OpenBuildings/spiderling#drivers

So I'm not sure what you mean with PhantomInstaller. This library does not install PhantomJS. It expects that you have installed it and have it accessible in your PATH. Which means that when you type phantomjs on the command line from any directory it will find the binary.

If you're on unixy system - Linux, Mac OS, BSD:
Let's say you have installed the phantomjs binary in ~/bin/phantomjs, then you need to add that directory to your PATH variable. You can add the following to your shell profile file: export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin.

---

The next Problem is, the driver will lose the custom Port. So when i set the Port like you did in your example, it will be used for the first port/connection tests, but not for the last ones.

If you are referring to https://github.com/OpenBuildings/spiderling#driver_phantomjs example, then you see there that it states it chooses a port on random. However it then keeps that port. If you set a port on the PhantomJS connection instance it also persists that port throughout commands.

You could see the relevant code for that here: https://github.com/OpenBuildings/spiderling/blob/master/src/Openbuildings/Spiderling/Driver/Phantomjs/Connection.php#L40-L59

Please let me know if you still have any problems.

[matze-berg]

This does not work !!!
$driver = new \Openbuildings\Spiderling\Driver_Phantomjs($connection);

It must be:

$driver = new \Openbuildings\Spiderling\Driver_Phantomjs();
$driver->connection($connection);

But the server still does not start/listen in my projext. And the PATH is set.
phantomjs --version
works like charm. But the Script Execution with phantom.js does not work. :(

[hkdobrev]

Thanks @matnex! This is a good point! The documentation is obviously wrong on this one. You could submit a PR or I could try to fix it in the next couple of days.

---

About the phantomjs binary and your PATH, it's possible that the loaded PATH is different in your PHP environment than in your shell. Try with a small PHP script that tries to shell out to phantomjs and see if you could access it then. Try to print your PATH from inside PHP to inspect it.

[matze-berg]

Good morning Haralan,
phantomjs is working correct. After finding out the port problem, i have used a defined port and startet the Server in my shell manuell. So when i start it with your script calls in the cmd and disable the start-routine (because it checks if the port is allready open), the rest will work and phantomjs will crawl, edit and submit the results, etc.

But when i try to start the server with your script, it won't start and listen to the ports.
So there must be something missing or wrong at this point.

[halfer]

@matnex: I have a couple of projects where Spiderling works just fine, e.g. this one. Feel free to clone that and pull it apart!

@hkdobrev: I suspect the OP's reference to PhantomInstaller comes from repo jakoch/phantomjs-installer, which is a Composer dependency to install PhantomJS inside a PHP project.

[hkdobrev]

@halfer Thanks for the insight.

Actually @matnex makes a valid point. The PhantomJS binary should be configurable. We are actually working on a simple new configuration which could be used to define a custom path to the binary.

@EZarkov is working on that and should submit a PR in the next few days.

[halfer]

The PhantomJS binary should be configurable.

Yeah, I've gotten around this when running tests thusly:

PATH=$PATH:`pwd`/vendor/bin ./vendor/bin/phpunit

However a configuration method, accessible to both Spiderling and PHPUnit Spiderling, would be most welcome.