Can you deploy Watir on Heroku to generate HTML Snapshots? If so, how?

Question

I would like to generate HTML Snapshots using Watir, hosted on Heroku.

Google\'s Full Specification for Making AJAX

Answer 1

Yes you can

Use Watir with PhantomJS, which is headless

browser = Watir::Browser.new :phantomjs

To use PhantomJS on Heroku, you'll need to use a Heroku PhantomJS buildpack

Answer 2

No. You need a full desktop environment to run watir. Heroku doesn't provide you with that.

You could use a service such as Amazon EC2

Answer 3

Troelskin's answer is incorrect. There are ways to run "headless" browsers with Watir, which do not require a "full desktop environment". Having said that, I do not know which method may be appropriate on Heroku.

Other "headless" automation options (if you are using Ruby) are Mechanize with Open-Uri, along with (optional) Nokogiri.