Browsate

Browsate is a Ruby gem for automating Chrome browser interactions using the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) via Chromate. It allows you to navigate to pages, execute JavaScript, and maintain session state between runs.

Features

Navigate to web pages using a Chrome browser
Execute JavaScript in the context of the page
Maintain session state (cookies, localStorage, etc.) between runs
Capture browser state (HTML, DOM, screenshots, console logs)
Command-line interface

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'browsate'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install browsate

Usage

Command Line

# Navigate to a URL
$ browsate visit https://example.com

# Execute JavaScript on the page
$ browsate visit https://example.com --script "document.querySelector('h1').textContent"

# Execute JavaScript from a file
$ browsate visit https://example.com --script ./scripts/my-script.js

# Wait for an element before executing
$ browsate visit https://example.com --wait "h1" --script "document.querySelector('h1').textContent"

# Use an existing session (e.g., for form submissions after initial page load)
$ browsate visit https://example.com
# Note the session ID output (e.g., session_abc123)
$ browsate exec session_abc123 "document.querySelector('form').submit()"

# Take a screenshot of a session
$ browsate screenshot session_abc123

Ruby API

require 'browsate'

# Configure Browsate
Browsate.configure do |config|
  config.debug = true
  config.session_dir = "/path/to/sessions"
end

# Navigate to a page
browser = Browsate.browser
browser.navigate("https://example.com")

# Execute JavaScript
result = browser.execute_javascript("document.querySelector('h1').textContent")
puts result

# Get current HTML
html = browser.html
puts html

# Take a screenshot
browser.screenshot("/path/to/screenshot.png")

# Close the browser
browser.close

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.