I’m working on a PHP web application and need to set up automated testing for the user interface. I want to run these tests on my Ubuntu server without having to display an actual browser window. What are the most effective tools and approaches for this kind of headless browser automation in PHP? I’ve heard about different options but I’m not sure which ones work best with Ubuntu. Should I be looking at specific PHP libraries or maybe use external tools that can be controlled from PHP? I’m also curious about performance and reliability of different solutions. Any recommendations for getting started with this setup would be really helpful.
I’ve been running headless Chrome tests on Ubuntu for two years now - it works great with php-webdriver. Setup’s easy: install Chrome and ChromeDriver via apt, then use Facebook’s php-webdriver library to control everything. Performance is solid since there’s no rendering, and I can run multiple instances at once without problems. Pro tip: always close your browser instances after tests or you’ll get memory leaks (learned that one the hard way). Way more reliable than the older tools I used before. Just make sure you set proper timeouts and handle network delays, especially when hitting external services.
phantomjs was my go-to for years but it’s deprecated now. i just use puppeteer with a simple php exec() call - way easier than dealing with selenium drivers. install node.js + puppeteer on ubuntu, write ur test scripts in js, and call them from php. runs super fast headless and handles modern js apps perfectly.
I’ve been running Selenium with headless Firefox on Ubuntu servers for three years now. Love it over Chrome - way less memory usage on long test runs. Just install firefox-esr and geckodriver, then hook it up through php-webdriver. Game changer was setting up parallel execution properly. You can run multiple headless instances by giving each driver its own port - no conflicts. I usually run 4-6 sessions at once on a regular server with zero performance problems. Main thing is isolating your test cases properly. Docker containers are perfect if you want complete separation between environments.