I know that HtmlUnit works as a headless browser solution for Java developers. I’m working on projects that use other programming languages and need similar functionality. Does anyone know if there are headless browser libraries available for C, C++, D, or Go? I need to automate web interactions without opening an actual browser window. Any recommendations for reliable libraries that can handle web scraping and browser automation tasks in these languages would be really helpful.
yeah, i second chromedp! it’s pretty good for go and doesn’t require a gui. for c/c++, you might also wanna look at selenium with headless options. could be worth a shot!
I’ve worked with headless automation in different languages, so here’s what I’d recommend. For C/C++, you can use libcurl with a JSON parser and implement the WebDriver protocol yourself - more work but it works well. In Go, try agouti alongside chromedp since it gives you a nice abstraction layer. For D language, hunt for Selenium WebDriver bindings or just spawn headless Chrome/Firefox processes and talk to them through DevTools protocol. WebDriver’s usually more portable than embedding browser engines directly in your app.
For Go, try Playwright-Go alongside chromedp - it supports Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. I’ve used CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) in headless mode for C++ projects with good results, but setup’s more involved. With D language, you’ll probably need C library bindings or call external headless browser processes. You can also implement WebDriver protocol directly if you want more control. Just heads up - solutions like CEF will bloat your app size because of the bundled browser components.