Use python selenium on headless linux server

Question

I have a Linux server which can only be controlled via CLI. It doesn't have any browser installed, mainly because it is not needed and because unless it's lynx or a derivative, it is going to install x-server, which I don't want.

I know I can run Chrome and Firefox with the headless option, but it still requires to be installed.

Is there any way I can run selenium on that server without having to install one of the "main" browsers, or will I have to switch to another library (urllib, requests) if I want to programatically browse the web?

Answer 1

You can use phantomJS which is headless-selenium for your purpose.

Download phantomJS

wget https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Untar it

tar xvjf phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Move or copy it into the binary executable directory

cp phantomjs-2.1.1-linux-x86_64/bin/phantomjs /usr/bin/

import the selenium webdriver

from selenium import webdriver
wd = webdriver.PhantomJS()

connect to the website

wd.get("https://www.website-url.com")