@sparticuz/chromium

What is @sparticuz/chromium?

@sparticuz/chromium is an npm package that provides a pre-compiled version of Chromium, which is optimized for AWS Lambda and other serverless environments. It allows you to run headless Chromium in environments where installing Chromium from scratch would be impractical or impossible.

What are @sparticuz/chromium's main functionalities?

Launching Headless Chromium

This code demonstrates how to launch a headless Chromium browser using Puppeteer and the @sparticuz/chromium package. It navigates to a webpage and prints the title.

const chromium = require('@sparticuz/chromium');
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
    args: chromium.args,
    defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
    headless: chromium.headless,
  });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  console.log(await page.title());
  await browser.close();
})();

Taking Screenshots

This code demonstrates how to take a screenshot of a webpage using Puppeteer and the @sparticuz/chromium package. The screenshot is saved as 'example.png'.

const chromium = require('@sparticuz/chromium');
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
    args: chromium.args,
    defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
    headless: chromium.headless,
  });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await page.screenshot({ path: 'example.png' });
  await browser.close();
})();

PDF Generation

This code demonstrates how to generate a PDF of a webpage using Puppeteer and the @sparticuz/chromium package. The PDF is saved as 'example.pdf'.

const chromium = require('@sparticuz/chromium');
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
    args: chromium.args,
    defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
    headless: chromium.headless,
  });
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  await page.pdf({ path: 'example.pdf', format: 'A4' });
  await browser.close();
})();

Other packages similar to @sparticuz/chromium

puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It is not specifically optimized for serverless environments like @sparticuz/chromium, but it is widely used for web scraping, automated testing, and other browser automation tasks.

chrome-aws-lambda

chrome-aws-lambda is a package that provides a pre-compiled version of Chromium specifically for AWS Lambda. It is very similar to @sparticuz/chromium in terms of functionality and use cases, but it is more focused on AWS Lambda environments.

playwright

Playwright is a Node library to automate Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. It is similar to Puppeteer but supports multiple browsers. It is not specifically optimized for serverless environments but offers extensive browser automation capabilities.

README

@sparticuz/chromium

Chromium for Serverless platforms

This package was originally forked from alixaxel/chrome-aws-lambda#264. The biggest difference, besides the chromium version, is the inclusion of some code from https://github.com/alixaxel/lambdafs, as well as dropping that as a dependency. Due to some changes in WebGL, the files in bin/swiftshader.tar.br need to be extracted to /tmp instead of /tmp/swiftshader. This necessitated changes in lambdafs.

However, it quickly became difficult to maintain because of the pace of puppeteer updates. This package, @sparticuz/chromium, is not chained to puppeteer versions, but also does not include the overrides and hooks that the original package contained. It is only chromium, as well as the special code needed to decompress the brotli package.

Install

puppeteer ships with a prefered version of chromium. In order to figure out what version of @sparticuz/chromium you will need, please visit Puppeteer's Chromium Support page.

For example, as of today, the latest version of puppeteer is 18.0.5. The latest version of chromium stated on puppeteer's support page is 106.0.5249.0. So you need to install @sparticuz/chromium@106.

# Puppeteer or Playwright is a production dependency
npm install --save puppeteer-core@$PUPPETEER_VERSION
# @sparticuz/chromium can be a DEV dependency IF YOU ARE USING A LAYER, if you are not using a layer, use as a production dependency!
npm install --save-dev @sparticuz/chromium@$CHROMIUM_VERSION

If your vendor does not allow large deploys (chromium.br is 50+ MB), you'll need to host the chromium-v#-pack.tar separatly and use the @sparticuz/chromium-min package.

npm install --save @sparticuz/chromium-min@$CHROMIUM_VERSION

If you wish to install an older version of Chromium, take a look at @sparticuz/chrome-aws-lambda or @alixaxel/chrome-aws-lambda.

Versioning

The @sparticuz/chromium version schema is as follows: MajorChromiumVersion.MinorChromiumIncrement.@Sparticuz/chromiumPatchLevel

Usage

This package works with all the currently supported AWS Lambda Node.js runtimes out of the box.

const test = require("node:test");
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer-core");
const chromium = require("@sparticuz/chromium");

test("Check the page title of example.com", async (t) => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
    args: chromium.args,
    defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
    executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
    headless: chromium.headless,
    ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
  });

  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto("https://example.com");
  const pageTitle = await page.title();
  await browser.close();

  assert.strictEqual(pageTitle, "Example Domain");
});

Usage with Playwright

const test = require("node:test");
// Need to rename playwright's chromium object to something else
const { chromium: playwright } = require('playwright-core');
const chromium = require('@sparticuz/chromium');

test("Check the page title of example.com", async (t) => {
  const browser = await playwright.launch({
    args: chromium.args,
    executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
    headless: chromium.headless,
  });

  const context = await browser.newContext();
  const page = await context.newPage();
  await page.goto("https://example.com");
  const pageTitle = await page.title();
  await browser.close();

  assert.strictEqual(pageTitle, "Example Domain");
});

You should allocate at least 512 MB of RAM to your Lambda, however 1600 MB (or more) is recommended.

-min package

The -min package DOES NOT include the chromium brotli files. There are a few instances where this is useful. Primarily, this is useful when you have file size limits.

To use the -min package please install the @sparticuz/chromium-min package.

When using the -min package, you need to specify the location of the brotli files.

In this example, /opt/chromium contains all the brotli files

/opt
  /chromium
    /aws.tar.br
    /chromium.br
    /swiftshader.tar.br

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
  args: chromium.args,
  defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
  executablePath: await chromium.executablePath("/opt/chromium"),
  headless: chromium.headless,
  ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
});

In the following example, https://www.example.com/chromiumPack.tar contains all the brotli files. Generally, this would be a location on S3, or another very fast downloadable location, that is close to your function's execution location.

@sparticuz/chromium will download the pack tar file, untar the files to /tmp/chromium-pack, then will un-brotli the files to /tmp/chromium. The next iteration will have /tmp/chromium exist and will use the already downloaded files.

The latest chromium-pack.tar file will be on the latest release.

const browser = await puppeteer.launch({
  args: chromium.args,
  defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
  executablePath: await chromium.executablePath("https://www.example.com/chromiumPack.tar"),
  headless: chromium.headless,
  ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
});

Running Locally

This package will run in headless mode when NODE_ENV = "test". If you want to run using your own local binary, set IS_LOCAL to anything.

API

Method / Property	Returns	Description
font(url)	{?Promise<string>}	Provisions a custom font and returns its basename.
args	{!Array<string>}	Provides a list of recommended additional Chromium flags.
defaultViewport	{!Object}	Returns more sensible default viewport settings.
executablePath(location)	{?Promise<string>}	Returns the path the Chromium binary was extracted to.
headless	{!boolean}	Returns true if we are running on AWS Lambda or GCF.

Fonts

The Amazon Linux 2 AWS Lambda runtime is no longer provisioned with any font faces.

Because of this, this package ships with Open Sans, which supports the following scripts:

• Latin
• Greek
• Cyrillic

To provision additional fonts, simply call the font() method with an absolute path or URL:

await chromium.font('/var/task/fonts/NotoColorEmoji.ttf');
// or
await chromium.font('https://raw.githack.com/googlei18n/noto-emoji/master/fonts/NotoColorEmoji.ttf');

Noto Color Emoji (or similar) is needed if you want to render emojis.

For URLs, it's recommended that you use a CDN, like raw.githack.com or gitcdn.xyz.

This method should be invoked before launching Chromium.

On non-serverless environments, the font() method is a no-op to avoid polluting the user space.

---

Alternatively, it's also possible to provision fonts via AWS Lambda Layers.

Simply create a directory named .fonts and place any font faces you want there:

.fonts
├── NotoColorEmoji.ttf
└── Roboto.ttf

Afterwards, you just need to ZIP the directory and upload it as a AWS Lambda Layer:

zip -9 --filesync --move --recurse-paths .fonts.zip .fonts/

Compiling

To compile your own version of Chromium check the Ansible playbook instructions.

AWS Lambda Layer

Lambda Layers is a convenient way to manage common dependencies between different Lambda Functions.

The following set of (Linux) commands will create a layer of this package:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/sparticuz/chromium.git && \
cd chromium && \
make chromium.zip

The above will create a chromium.zip file, which can be uploaded to your Layers console. You can and should upload using the aws cli. (Replace the variables with your own values)

bucketName="chromiumUploadBucket" && \
versionNumber="107" && \
aws s3 cp chromium.zip "s3://${bucketName}/chromiumLayers/chromium${versionNumber}.zip" && \
aws lambda publish-layer-version --layer-name chromium --description "Chromium v${versionNumber}" --content "S3Bucket=${bucketName},S3Key=chromiumLayers/chromium${versionNumber}.zip" --compatible-runtimes nodejs --compatible-architectures x86_64

Alternatively, you can also download the layer artifact from one of our releases.

According to our benchmarks, it's 40% to 50% faster than using the off-the-shelf puppeteer bundle.

Migration from chrome-aws-lambda

• Change the import or require to be @sparticuz/chromium
• Add the import or require for puppeteer-core
• Change the browser launch to use the native puppeteer.launch() function
• Change the executablePath to be a function.

-const chromium = require('@sparticuz/chrome-aws-lambda');
+const chromium = require("@sparticuz/chromium");
+const puppeteer = require("puppeteer-core");

exports.handler = async (event, context, callback) => {
  let result = null;
  let browser = null;

  try {
-    browser = await chromium.puppeteer.launch({
+    browser = await puppeteer.launch({
      args: chromium.args,
      defaultViewport: chromium.defaultViewport,
-      executablePath: await chromium.executablePath,
+      executablePath: await chromium.executablePath(),
      headless: chromium.headless,
      ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
    });

    let page = await browser.newPage();

    await page.goto(event.url || 'https://example.com');

    result = await page.title();
  } catch (error) {
    return callback(error);
  } finally {
    if (browser !== null) {
      await browser.close();
    }
  }

  return callback(null, result);
};

Compression

The Chromium binary is compressed using the Brotli algorithm.

This allows us to get the best compression ratio and faster decompression times.

File	Algorithm	Level	Bytes	MiB	%	Inflation
chromium	-	-	136964856	130.62	-	-
chromium.gz	Gzip	1	51662087	49.27	62.28%	1.035s
chromium.gz	Gzip	2	50438352	48.10	63.17%	1.016s
chromium.gz	Gzip	3	49428459	47.14	63.91%	0.968s
chromium.gz	Gzip	4	47873978	45.66	65.05%	0.950s
chromium.gz	Gzip	5	46929422	44.76	65.74%	0.938s
chromium.gz	Gzip	6	46522529	44.37	66.03%	0.919s
chromium.gz	Gzip	7	46406406	44.26	66.12%	0.917s
chromium.gz	Gzip	8	46297917	44.15	66.20%	0.916s
chromium.gz	Gzip	9	46270972	44.13	66.22%	0.968s
chromium.gz	Zopfli	10	45089161	43.00	67.08%	0.919s
chromium.gz	Zopfli	20	45085868	43.00	67.08%	0.919s
chromium.gz	Zopfli	30	45085003	43.00	67.08%	0.925s
chromium.gz	Zopfli	40	45084328	43.00	67.08%	0.921s
chromium.gz	Zopfli	50	45084098	43.00	67.08%	0.935s
chromium.br	Brotli	0	55401211	52.83	59.55%	0.778s
chromium.br	Brotli	1	54429523	51.91	60.26%	0.757s
chromium.br	Brotli	2	46436126	44.28	66.10%	0.659s
chromium.br	Brotli	3	46122033	43.99	66.33%	0.616s
chromium.br	Brotli	4	45050239	42.96	67.11%	0.692s
chromium.br	Brotli	5	40813510	38.92	70.20%	0.598s
chromium.br	Brotli	6	40116951	38.26	70.71%	0.601s
chromium.br	Brotli	7	39302281	37.48	71.30%	0.615s
chromium.br	Brotli	8	39038303	37.23	71.50%	0.668s
chromium.br	Brotli	9	38853994	37.05	71.63%	0.673s
chromium.br	Brotli	10	36090087	34.42	73.65%	0.765s
chromium.br	Brotli	11	34820408	33.21	74.58%	0.712s

License

MIT