How do I run PhantomJS on AWS Lambda with NodeJS

Question

After not finding a working answer anywhere else on the internet, I am submitting this ask-and-answer-myself tutorial

How can I get a simple PhantomJS process running from a NodeJS script on AWS Lambda? My code works fine on my local machine, but I run into different problems trying to run it on Lambda.

Answer 1

EDIT: This no longer works. This is an apparent solution.

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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.

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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);     }); } 

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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(); 

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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.