A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.
Headless browsers provide automated control of a web page in an environment similar to popular web browsers, but they are executed via a command-line interface or using network communication. They are particularly useful for testing web pages as they are able to render and understand HTML the same way a browser would, including styling elements such as page layout, color, font selection and execution of JavaScript and Ajax which are usually not available when using other testing methods.[1]
Since version 59 of Google Chrome[2][3] and version 56[4] of Firefox,[5] there is native support for remote control of the browser. This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS.[6]
The main use cases for headless browsers are:
Headless browsers are also useful for web scraping. Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use Ajax.[7]
Headless browsers have also been misused in various ways:
However, a study of browser traffic in 2018 found no preference by malicious actors for headless browsers.[3] There is no indication that headless browsers are used more frequently than non-headless browsers for malicious purposes, like DDoS attacks, SQL injections or cross-site scripting attacks
As several major browsers natively support headless mode through APIs, some software exists to perform browser automation through a unified interface. These include:
Some test automation software and frameworks include headless browsers as part of their testing apparati.[3]
Another approach is to use software that provides browser APIs. For example, Deno provides browser APIs as part of its design. For Node.js, jsdom[17] is the most complete provider. While most are able to support common browser features (HTML parsing, cookies, XHR, some JavaScript, etc.), they do not render the DOM and have limited support for DOM events. They usually perform faster than full browsers, but are unable to correctly interpret many popular websites.[18][19][20]
Another is HtmlUnit, a headless browser written in Java. HtmlUnit uses the Rhino engine to provide JavaScript and Ajax support as well as partial rendering capability.[21][22]
These are various software that provide headless browser APIs.
Another noted earlier effort was envjs in 2008 from John Resig, which was a simulated browser environment written in JavaScript for the Rhino engine.[29]