PhantomJS WebDriver configuration issues in JMeter testing setup

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

I’m having trouble setting up a headless browser test using PhantomJS within my JMeter environment. I’ve added all the necessary PhantomJS libraries to the lib folder, but when I try to launch a webpage, I keep getting errors.

My setup includes basic Selenium WebDriver code wrapped in JUnit. Here’s what I’m working with:

System.setProperty("phantomjs.binary.path", "C:\\Testing\\phantomjs.exe");
WebDriver browser = new PhantomJSDriver();
browser.navigate().to("http://www.example.com");
browser.manage().window().maximize();
//browser.findElement(By.id("testElement")).click();
System.out.println(browser.getTitle());
browser.close();

The error occurs right when trying to navigate to the target URL. Has anyone encountered similar issues with PhantomJS integration in JMeter? What could be causing this problem?

2

Navigation timeout’s probably your issue. PhantomJS is notorious for hanging indefinitely when pages don’t load properly. Set an explicit timeout right after creating your driver: browser.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);. Also check if your PhantomJS version plays nice with your Selenium version - there were breaking changes in later releases that’ll bite you. I hit the same wall mixing newer Selenium with older PhantomJS builds. Quick fix: add --load-images=no to speed things up and avoid hanging on image loads.

3

had this same issue last month! make sure your phantomjs.exe is in the correct path and check that ghostdriver dependency is in your lib folder. try adding this capability before creating the driver: caps.setCapability("phantomjs.cli.args", new String[]{"--ignore-ssl-errors=true"}); - fixed it for me. phantomjs is pretty outdated though.

4

PhantomJS got deprecated in 2018 - that’s probably why you’re running into these issues. No one maintains it anymore and it breaks on tons of modern sites. Don’t waste time troubleshooting it. Switch to Chrome or Firefox headless for your JMeter tests instead. Chrome headless works great and they actually support it. Just use ChromeDriver with the --headless argument in ChromeOptions. You’ll get better performance, reliability, and it won’t break on modern sites. The switch is pretty easy and you can keep most of your existing WebDriver code.