如何自动每小时运行一次CasperJS脚本？

Question

I have a CasperJS code that executes some tasks on my website. I want the code to run every hour!

For the moment being, the code is running locally and manually (using casperjs cas.js ) every time. Now I want:

1. To make it run every hour automatically
2. To deploy it somewhere (eg Heroku)

I could achieve the first objective by making a Node server that runs the command casperjs casper/cas.js every hour (using setInterval function). However, I couldn't deploy it on Heroku since it supports only one type of code (Node.js). The cas.js script is written with CasperJS, so it couldn't been executed!

What is the best way to achieve these two goals?

Answer 1

Let's assume you are on Linux...

1. The most elegant solution is to use a cron job , as suggested by Vaviloff .

If you want to execute your CasperJS script every hour, you can edit your crontab with crontab -e and then add the following entry:

0 * * * * PHANTOMJS_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/phantomjs /usr/local/bin/casperjs /absolute/path/to/your/casper/script.js 2>&1

Some remarks:

• 0 means "0 minute". It is required here, otherwise your script will run every minute.
• Since CasperJS depends on PhantomJS , you have to specify the path to the PhantomJS command using the proper environment variable ( PHANTOMJS_EXECUTABLE ).
• Make sure PhantomJS & CasperJS paths are /usr/local/bin/phantomjs and /usr/local/bin/casperjs respectively, using which ( which phantomjs & which casperjs ).
• Do not forget to write the absolute path to your own CasperJS script.
• 2>&1 redirects stderr to stdout .

2. Use SpookyJS if you want to run CasperJS scripts with Node.js.

npm i spooky