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confess.js

A small script library that uses PhantomJS 1.2 (or later) to headlessly analyze web pages. Currently it can perform the following tasks:

  • Generation of an appcache manifest for a web app
  • Simple performance analysis of a web page and its resources
  • List of CSS properties used on the page

Examples

confess.js can enumerate a web app's resources for the purposes of creating a cache manifest file to make your apps run offline.

For example...

> phantomjs confess.js http://functionsource.com appcache

...will write, to stdout:

CACHE MANIFEST

# This manifest was created by confess.js, http://github.com/jamesgpearce/confess
#
# Time: Fri Dec 23 2011 13:12:32 GMT-0800 (PST)
# Retrieved URL: http://functionsource.com/
# User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/...

CACHE:
/images/icons/netflix.png
/javascripts/lib/legacy.js
/stylesheets/light.css
/stylesheets/screen.css
/stylesheets/syntax.css
http://functionscopedev.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/dabblet.png
http://functionsource.com/images/avatars/ben.png
http://functionsource.com/images/avatars/dion.png
http://functionsource.com/images/avatars/kevin.png
http://functionsource.com/images/avatars/ryan.png
http://functionsource.com/images/header.png
http://functionsource.com/images/header_wht.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/facebook.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/firehose.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/linkedin.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/podcast.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/rss.png
http://functionsource.com/images/icons/twitter.png
http://use.typekit.com/k/tqz3zpc-b.css?3bb2a6e53c9684f...
http://use.typekit.com/tqz3zpc.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js

NETWORK:
*

The other thing it can do is generate a simple performance analysis of a site:

> phantomjs confess.js http://functionsource.com performance

...which will write, to stdout, something like:

Elapsed load time:   6370ms
   # of resources:       21

 Fastest resource:    147ms; http://functionsource.com/...egacy.js
 Slowest resource:   2766ms; http://use.typekit.com/...z3zpc-b.css
  Total resources:  17898ms

Smallest resource:      35b; http://www.google-analytics.com/__...
 Largest resource:   40183b; http://functionsource.com/...ader.png
  Total resources:  107594b; (at least)

Elapsed load time:   2927ms
   # of resources:       21

 Fastest resource:     59ms; http://functionsource.com/...egacy.js
 Slowest resource:   1306ms; http://use.typekit.com/...78ed8d47e4b
  Total resources:   7573ms

Smallest resource:      35b; http://www.google-analytics.com/...q~
 Largest resource:   32614b; http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
  Total resources:  149860b

...and which can also generate an ASCII-art waterfall of the waits and receipts of each requested resource:

 1|---------------------=                                           |
 2|                     ----------                                  |
 3|                     ---=                                        |
 4|                     --------=                                   |
 5|                     ---------=                                  |
 6|                     -----------                                 |
 7|                     -------                                     |
 8|                              -----------=========               |
 9|                              ---======                          |
10|                               ----==                            |
  ...

 1:    577ms;   17669b; http://functionsource.com/
 2:    255ms;   24990b; http://use.typekit.com/tqz3zpc.js
 3:     59ms;    1733b; http://functionsource.com/...ts/lib/legacy.js
 4:    216ms;    5291b; http://functionsource.com/...sheets/light.css
 5:    240ms;    4150b; http://functionsource.com/...heets/syntax.css
 6:    283ms;   12049b; http://functionsource.com/...heets/screen.css
 7:    176ms;   32614b; http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
 8:    537ms;    1448b; http://functionscopedev.files.wordpress.com..
 9:    228ms;    5792b; http://functionsource.com/...cons/netflix.png
10:    134ms;    1153b; http://functionsource.com/...avatars/dion.png
  ...

As well as using the final command line argument to perform different tasks, you can use the local config.json file to affect the behavior of the way in which confess.js runs.

For example, you can set the user-agent header of the request made by PhantomJS to request the page, in case you're serving mobile apps off similar entry-point URLs to your desktop content.

Similarly, if you're creating an appcache manifest, you can use filters to indicate which files should be included or excluded from the generated CACHE list.

Installation & usage

The one-and-only dependency is the one-and-only PhantomJS, version 1.2 or later. Install this, and ensure it's all good by trying out some of its example scripts.

Then, assuming phantomjs is on your path, and from the directory containing confess.js and config.json, run the tasks with:

> phantomjs confess.js URL TASK [CONFIG]

Where the URL is mandatory, and points to the page or app you're analyzing. TASK is what you want the tool to do, and CONFIG is the location of an alternative configuration file, if you don't want to use the default config.json.

The appcache task

Using the appcache task argument will get confess.js to load the page, and then search the DOM and the CSSOM (and then the results of applying the latter to the former) for references to any external resources that the app needs. It can optionally also look for resource request events.

The results go to stdout, but of course you can pipe it to a file. If you want to create a cache manifest for an app, this might be called something like my.appcache:

> phantomjs confess.js http://functionsource.com appcache > my.appcache

You would then need to attach add this file to your app, and reference the manifest in the html element:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html manifest="my.appcache">
    <head>

(And ensure that the manifest file gets emitted from your web server with a content type of text/cache-manifest.)

To check the resulting manifest's syntax, you might like to use Frederic Hemberger's great cache manifest validator.

The performance task

Using the performance task argument will get confess.js to load the page, and then log the sizes and timings of its constituent parts.

It will list the fastest and slowest resources, and also the largest and smallest (subject to the availability of the content-length header). With the verbose configuration enabled, it will also list out all the resources loaded as part of the page, and display an ASCII-art waterfall chart of their timings.

The cssproperties task

Using the cssproperties task argument will get confess.js to load the page, and then parse the styles in the DOM and CSSOM to identify which CSS properties are being used by the page.

Configuration

The following is the default config.json file for confess.js, but you can of course alter any of the values in this file, or a new config file of your own.

{
    "task": "appcache",
    "userAgent": "default",
    "userAgentAliases": {
        "iphone": "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; ...",
        "android": "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android ...",
        "chrome": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X ..."
    },
    "wait": 0,
    "consolePrefix": "#",
    "verbose": true,
    "appcache": {
        "urlsFromDocument": true,
        "urlsFromRequests": false,
        "cacheFilter": ".*",
        "networkFilter": null
    }
}

These properties are used as follows:

  • task - the default type of task you want confess.js to perform, if not specified on the command line. appcache, performance, and cssproperties are the supported values

  • userAgent - the user-agent to make the request as, or default to use PhantomJS's usual user-agent string

  • userAgentAliases - common aliases for the userAgent setting. For example, you could use the setting "userAgent": "iphone" and it will resolve to the iPhone's full UA provided here.

  • wait - the number of milliseconds to wait after the document has loaded before parsing for resources. This might be useful if you know that a deferred script might be making relevant additions to the DOM.

  • consolePrefix - if set, confess.js will output the browser's console to the standard output. Useful for detecting if there are also any issues with the app's execution itself.

  • verbose - whether to add extra output about the generator's configuration into the output. Set to true for the performance task in order to see the waterfall chart.

  • appcache.urlsFromDocument - whether to traverse the DOM and CSSOM looking for resources; the default behaviour

  • appcache.urlsFromRequests - whether to also (or alternatively) listen for resource loading events to detect required dependencies

  • appcache.cacheFilter - a regex to indicate which files to include in the CACHE block of the manifest. If set to null, none will. As a better example, \\.png$ will indicate that only PNG files should be cached. (Note the double escaping: once for the regex, and once for the JSON.)

  • appcache.networkFilter - a regex to indicate which files not to include in the CACHE block of the manifest, and which a browser will request from the network. If set to null, none will. Note that matching files will not be explicitly listed in the NETWORK block of the manifest, since there is always a catch-all * wildcard added.

Note that there are currently no specific configuration options for the performance task.