chromedock

Docker image with latest Chrome, chromedriver and a VNC server for use in local development (or maybe elsewhere but not recommended).

Usage

To launch a container from this image, you must have Docker installed. If already, run the below command:

$ docker run -d --name chromedock -p 4444:4444 -p 5900:5900 syncloudsoftech/chromedock

To start/stop the (named) container at a later point in time, use below commnads:

# start "chromedock" named container
$ docker start chromedock

# stop "chromedock" named container
$ docker stop chromedock

You can also connect to port 5900 using any VNC client e.g., RealVNC Viewer to interact with running Chrome instances.

Further to use in automation, you can specify the chromedriver server address shown as below:

const { Builder, By, Key, until } = require('selenium-webdriver');

(async function example() {
  const driver = await new Builder()
    .forBrowser('chrome')
    .usingServer('http://<container_hostname_or_ip>:4444')
    .build();
  try {
    await driver.get('http://www.google.com/ncr');
    await driver.findElement(By.name('q')).sendKeys('Syncloud Softech', Key.RETURN);
    await driver.wait(until.titleIs('Syncloud Softech - Google Search'), 1000);
  } finally {
    await driver.quit();
  }
})();

docker-compose.yml

To include this container as a service in your existing docker-compose.yml setup, use below definition:

version: "3"

services:
  chromedock:
    image: syncloudsoftech/chromedock
    ports:
      - "4444:4444"
      - "5900:5900"

If you wish to use the --user-data-dir option for persisting sessions, you need to create a directory under /home/chrome folder and use its abosolue path with Chrome arguments:

FROM syncloudsoftech/chromedock

RUN mkdir -p /home/chrome/data && \
    chown chrome:chrome /home/chrome/data

Then run as below:

# build the container
$ docker build -t chromedock .

# create a "data" directory
$ mkdir data

# start the container
$ docker run --rm -it -p 4444:4444 -p 5900:5900 -v ./data:/home/chrome/data chromedock

If using docker-compose.yml file, you can do as below:

version: "3"

services:
  chromedock:
    build:
      dockerfile_inline: |
        FROM syncloudsoftech/chromedock
        RUN mkdir -p /home/chrome/data && \
        chown chrome:chrome /home/chrome/data
    image: syncloudsoftech/chromedock
    ports:
      - "4444:4444"
      - "5900:5900"
    volumes:
      - chromedock-data:/home/chrome/data

volumes:
  chromedock-data:

Development

Building or modifying the container yourself from source is also quite easy. Just clone the repository and run below command:

$ docker build -t chromedock .

Run the locally built container as follows:

$ docker run --rm -it -p 4444:4444 -p 5900:5900 chromedock

License

See the LICENSE file.