How do I run PhantomJS on AWS Lambda with NodeJS
A generic solution is to use an actual AWS Linux machine to install the npm modules and transfer them to your lambda executable. Here are the steps:
- spin up an EC2 instance
- ssh into EC2
- install Node + npm
- install the required npm modules
- zip them up
- fetch them to your local machine with
scp
- unzip and copy to the npm_modules folder of your lambda function (don't npm install locally!)
- upload your code to Lambda
Here is a tutorial with links to further resources: Compile node module libraries for AWS Lambda
This also works in such cases when PhantomJS is a dependency of another node module, eg. node-webshot and you have less influence on what is being installed.
EDIT: This no longer works. This is an apparent solution.
Here is a complete code sample of a simple PhantomJS
process, which is launched as a NodeJS
child_process
. It is also available on github.
index.js
var childProcess = require('child_process');
var path = require('path');
exports.handler = function(event, context) {
// Set the path as described here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/running-executables-in-aws-lambda/
process.env['PATH'] = process.env['PATH'] + ':' + process.env['LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT'];
// Set the path to the phantomjs binary
var phantomPath = path.join(__dirname, 'phantomjs_linux-x86_64');
// Arguments for the phantom script
var processArgs = [
path.join(__dirname, 'phantom-script.js'),
'my arg'
];
// Launc the child process
childProcess.execFile(phantomPath, processArgs, function(error, stdout, stderr) {
if (error) {
context.fail(error);
return;
}
if (stderr) {
context.fail(error);
return;
}
context.succeed(stdout);
});
}
phantom-script.js
var system = require('system');
var args = system.args;
// Example of how to get arguments passed from node script
// args[0] would be this file's name: phantom-script.js
var unusedArg = args[1];
// Send some info node's childProcess' stdout
system.stdout.write('hello from phantom!')
phantom.exit();
To get a PhantomJS binary that works with Amazon's Linux machine's, go to the PhantomJS Bitbucket Page and download phantomjs-1.9.8-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
.