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I am developing a Node.js app, and I use Selenium Webdriver on it for scraping purposes. However, when I deploy on Heroku, Selenium doesn't work. How can I make Selenium work on Heroku?

Athanasios Canko
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  • Hello man, have you found the solution for this? I'm also using Node on the server and using Angular on frontend, everything works locally but after I deployed it on heroku, selenium doesn't work – Sherwin Ablaña Dapito Sep 20 '18 at 04:10

2 Answers2

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Below is a javaScript sample code using selenium-webdriver npm package with chrome browser.

const webdriver = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');

let options = new chrome.Options();
//Below arguments are critical for Heroku deployment
options.addArguments("--headless");
options.addArguments("--disable-gpu");
options.addArguments("--no-sandbox");

let driver = new webdriver.Builder()
  .forBrowser('chrome')
  .setChromeOptions(options)
  .build();

driver.get('http://www.google.com');
driver.quit();

Before you are ready to deploy, you would need to add two buildpacks to Heroku.

  • Using Heroku buildpacks command:
$ heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-chromedriver
$ heroku buildpacks:add --index 2 https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-google-chrome

or

Angela L.
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I was able to get the Selenium Webdriver working on Node/Heroku using PhantomJs as the headless browser. I installed the PhantomJs buildpack to my Heroku app and it just worked. I struggled to get Chrome and Firefox drivers working on Heroku... I wrote a blog with the steps and code I used to get it working:

http://www.viderman.com/2017/05/selenium-on-heroku.html

Alex Viderman
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    Please include the steps and code in your answer. Answers should not rely on external links for the majority of their information. – Stevoisiak May 11 '17 at 20:01
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    Same could be said about the blog post :) External references have a way of being deleted. – baash05 Sep 24 '18 at 07:41