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Chrome on remote hosts

Source: vignettes/example-remote-hosts.Rmd
example-remote-hosts.Rmd

Chromote can control a browser running on a remote host. To start the browser, open a terminal on the remote host and run one of the following, depending on your platform:

Warning: Depending on how the remote machine is configured, the Chrome debug server might be accessible to anyone on the Internet. Proceed with caution.

# Mac
"/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --headless \
  --remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0 --remote-debugging-port=9222

# Linux
google-chrome --headless --remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0 --remote-debugging-port=9222

# Windows
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"  --headless \
  --remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0 --remote-debugging-port=9222

Or you can launch this process in R:

library(chromote)

args <- c(
  get_chrome_args(),
  "--headless",
  "--remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0",
  "--remote-debugging-port=9222"
)

p <- processx::process$new(find_chrome(), args)

# To (abruptly) stop this process when you're finished with it:
p$kill()

Then, in your local R session, create a Chromote object with the host and port (you will need to use the correct IP address). Once it’s created, you can spawn a session off of it which you can control as normal:

library(chromote)

r <- Chromote$new(
  browser = ChromeRemote$new(host = "10.0.0.5", port = 9222)
)

b <- r$new_session()

b$Browser$getVersion()
b$view()
b$go_to("https://www.whatismybrowser.com/")
b$screenshot("browser.png")
b$screenshot("browser_string.png", selector = ".string-major")

When you use $view() on the remote browser, your local browser may block scripts for security reasons, which means that you won’t be able to view the remote browser. If your local browser is Chrome, there will be a shield-shaped icon in the location bar that you can click in order to enable loading the scripts. (Note: Some browsers don’t seem to work at all with the viewer.)