Setting up Phantom.js on Ubuntu

PhantomJS is a headless (no GUI) browser used for testing and capturing screen shots of web sites. I use it to test JavaScript in Ruby on Rails apps, along with Poltergeist, a driver for Capybara, the library for simulating user interaction with a web application.

1. Go to the PhantomJS download page

2. Download the Linux binary, it will be something like this phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

3. un-bzip and untar the archive file.

   bunzip2 phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2
   tar -xvf phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-x86_64.tar
   

4. move the file into the /opt directory

   sudo mv phantomjs-1.9.2-linux-x86_64 /opt/phantomjs
   

5. If you don’t have a ~/bin directory in your path, now would be a good time to make one and include it in your path.

6. Link the phantomjs executable to a link in your ~/bin directory.

   cd ~/bin
   ln -s /opt/phantomjs/bin/phantomjs phantomjs
   

7. You’re done! Test out the phantomjs command with phantomjs --help