Inter Process Communication

There are multiple ways to handle inter-process communication between PhantomJS and other processes.

File I/O

• files
• sockets (is there a general-purpose way to open a socket in PhantomJS? If so, we need a link here. Maybe there is not as of 1.9.0)
• named pipes

HTTP

• outgoing HTTP requests (to other processes/services)

  • GET/POST data to a server endpoint
  • GET/POST data to a server endpoint, parse resulting JSON/XML/HTML/etc.
  • Create a XMLHttpRequest object and use it as you would in a normal web page
  • Cross-domain requests are restricted by default (PhantomJS code is considered to be in file:// scope). Use Access-Control-Allow-Origin on your server to enable access.

• incoming HTTP requests (server). Use the API Reference WebServer webserver module

• route PhantomJS traffic through an HTTPS proxy like mitmproxy/libmproxy or fiddler

Websockets inside a WebPage context

• hixie-76 websockets only
• PhantomJS 2.x will eventually get a WebKit upgrade that has RFC 6455 websockets.

stdin, stdout, and stderr

See the stdin-stdout-stderr.js example script for details.