Guides

Puppeteer

This guide shows you how to use Puppeteer, a Node.js library which provides a high-level API to control browsers, including the option to run them headless (no UI).

To run it, follow these steps:

1. Install the kraft CLI tool and a container runtime engine, for example Docker.

2. Clone the examples repository and cd into the examples/node-express-puppeteer/ directory:

Code(bash)
 
git clone https://github.com/kraftcloud/examples
cd examples/node-express-puppeteer/

Make sure to log into Unikraft Cloud by setting your token and a metro close to you. This guide uses fra (Frankfurt, 🇩🇪):

Code(bash)
 
# Set Unikraft Cloud access token
export UKC_TOKEN=token
# Set metro to Frankfurt, DE
export UKC_METRO=fra

When done, invoke the following command to deploy this app on Unikraft Cloud:

Code(bash)
 
kraft cloud deploy -p 443:3000 -M 4096 .

The output shows the instance address and other details:

Code(ansi)
 
[●] Deployed successfully!
 │
 ├────────── name: node-express-puppeteer-7afg3
 ├────────── uuid: 7bb479d7-5b3e-444f-b07c-eae4da6f57cc
 ├───────── state: starting
 ├──────── domain: https://nameless-fog-0tvh1uov.fra.unikraft.app
 ├───────── image: node-express-puppeteer@sha256:78d0b180161c876f17d05116b93011ddcd44c76758d6fa0359f05938e67cea65
 ├──────── memory: 4096 MiB
 ├─────── service: little-snow-7qwu6vv5
 ├── private fqdn: node-express-puppeteer-7afg3.internal
 ├──── private ip: 172.16.3.1
 └────────── args: /usr/bin/wrapper.sh /usr/bin/node /app/bin/www

In this case, the instance name is node-express-puppeteer-7afg3. They're different for each run.

Use a browser to access the landing page of the Puppeteer (that uses ExpressJS). The app and the landing page are part of this repository.

In the example run above the landing page is at https://nameless-fog-0tvh1uov.fra.unikraft.app You can use the landing page to generate the PDF version of a remote page.

You can list information about the instance by running:

Code(bash)
 
kraft cloud instance list node-express-puppeteer-7afg3

Code(text)
 
NAME                          FQDN                                         STATE    STATUS        IMAGE                              MEMORY   ARGS                               BOOT TIME
node-express-puppeteer-7afg3  node-express-puppeteer-7afg3.fra.unikraft.app running  since 6mins   node-express-puppeteer-7afg3@s...  4.0 GiB  /usr/bin/wrapper.sh /usr/bin/n...  15.27 ms

When done, you can remove the instance:

Code(bash)
 
kraft cloud instance remove node-express-puppeteer-7afg3

Customize your deployment

The current deployment uses an ExpressJS service that uses the PDF generating functionality of Puppeteer. Customizing the deployment means updating the service, such as adding new functionalities provided by Puppeteer. You can update the service to provide a REST-like interface.

Learn more

Use the --help option for detailed information on using Unikraft Cloud:

Code(bash)
 
kraft cloud --help

Or visit the CLI Reference.