Issues with Element Detection in Python Selenium Using PhantomJS for Headless Browsing

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

I’m working on a Python script that utilizes Selenium WebDriver to automate testing on web pages. The goal is to identify login fields and automatically input user credentials. While everything functions correctly with the Chrome driver, I face challenges when I switch to PhantomJS for headless execution.

When I attempt to run the script using PhantomJS, I encounter the following error:

NoSuchElementException: Unable to find element with id 'user_email'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "webcrawler.py", line 105, in login
    email = self.singleton.driver.find_element_by_id("user_email")

Upon inspecting what PhantomJS loads, I find the page content is minimal:

<html><head></head><body></body></html>

Here’s the code for how I set up the WebDriver:

def __init__(self, browser="phantomjs"):
    if browser == "phantomjs":
        self.driver = webdriver.PhantomJS()
        self.driver.set_window_size(1120, 550)
    elif browser == "firefox":
        self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()
    elif browser == "chrome":
        self.driver = webdriver.Chrome()
    elif browser == "remote":
        self.driver = webdriver.Remote()
    elif browser == "ie":
        self.driver = webdriver.Ie()
    else:
        raise ValueError("Invalid browser value: %s" % browser)

I aim to deploy this script on AWS, so I need a solution for headless operation. What could be causing PhantomJS to fail at loading the page content correctly while other browsers work without issues?

2

The empty HTML output you’re seeing is a classic sign that the website is heavily dependent on JavaScript for content rendering. PhantomJS struggles with modern web applications that use frameworks like React or Angular because it runs an outdated WebKit engine from 2013. I encountered this exact scenario when trying to scrape a banking portal that worked fine in regular browsers but returned blank pages in PhantomJS. The issue wasn’t just compatibility but also timing - even when PhantomJS could execute the JavaScript, it often finished before the DOM was fully populated. For your AWS deployment, consider using Firefox in headless mode as an alternative to Chrome. Firefox headless tends to be more resource-efficient on smaller EC2 instances and handles authentication flows quite well in my experience.

3

yeah phantomjs is pretty much dead at this point. had similiar issues before and turns out the site was using some newer js that phantomjs just cant handle. try adding some wait time too - sometimes the page loads but elements arent ready yet. driver.implicitly_wait(10) might help if you stick with phantomjs for now

4

PhantomJS has been deprecated since 2018 and lacks support for modern JavaScript features that many websites now rely on. The minimal HTML you’re seeing suggests the page requires JavaScript execution that PhantomJS cannot handle properly. For AWS deployment, I recommend switching to headless Chrome instead. You can modify your setup like this:

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

This approach maintains headless functionality while providing better compatibility with modern web applications. You’ll need to install chromium-browser on your AWS instance, but it’s much more reliable than PhantomJS for current web scraping tasks.