Module resolution issues with Puppeteer in Vue.js Webpack build environment

[Bob_Clever]

I’m working on a Vue.js project with Webpack bundling and trying to integrate a headless Chrome automation library. When I attempt to use Puppeteer in my Vue component, I keep getting dependency resolution errors.

export default {
  created () {
    const chromeLauncher = require('puppeteer')

    ;(async () => {
      const browserInstance = await chromeLauncher.launch()
      const newTab = await browserInstance.newPage()
      await newTab.goto('https://www.example.com/search?q=test')
      const data = await newTab.evaluate(() => {
        const statsElement = document.querySelector('#searchResults')
        return statsElement.innerText
      })
      console.log(data)
      await browserInstance.close()
    })()
  }
}

The build process fails with missing module errors for child_process and fs dependencies that Puppeteer requires. I’ve tried installing these packages multiple times but the error persists. Has anyone successfully integrated Puppeteer with a Vue/Webpack setup?

[Finn_Mystery]

Puppeteer won’t work in browsers - it’s built for Node.js servers only. Those child_process and fs errors you’re seeing? They’re Node.js modules that don’t exist in browsers. Webpack can’t bundle them for client-side use. Same thing happened to me last year when I tried using Puppeteer in a React component. You need to move that code to your backend. Set up an API endpoint (Express works great) that handles the scraping, then call it from your Vue component with fetch or axios. It’s actually better this way - browser automation is heavy and you don’t want it blocking your UI.

[Alex_Thunder]

yeah, puppeteer’s server-side only. hit the same issue automating tests in my vue app. those missing modules are node.js specific - webpack can’t bundle them for browsers. try playwright or cypress for browser testing instead. if you really need puppeteer, run it as a separate node script outside your vue build.

[lucasg]

It’s a common misconception that Puppeteer can run in frontend frameworks. The dependency errors you’re encountering stem from the fact that Webpack isn’t able to polyfill Node.js modules like child_process and fs for the browser environment. I’ve faced a similar challenge when creating a web scraping tool using Vue. The effective solution is to establish a separate backend service, such as one using Node.js with Express. You can expose REST endpoints for your Puppeteer functionalities and call these endpoints from your Vue components. This approach offers enhanced security since the scraping logic executes server-side and improves performance by offloading heavy operations to the server.