Using the command line

CasperJS ships with a built-in command line parser on top of PhantomJS’ one, located in the cli module; it exposes passed arguments as positional ones and named options

But no worries for manipulating the cli module parsing API, a Casper instance always contains a ready to use cli property, allowing easy access of all these parameters.

Let’s consider this simple casper script:

var casper = require("casper").create();

casper.echo("Casper CLI passed args:");
require("utils").dump(casper.cli.args);

casper.echo("Casper CLI passed options:");
require("utils").dump(casper.cli.options);

casper.exit();

Note

Please note the two casper-path and cli options; these are passed to the casper script through the casperjs Python executable.

Execution results:

$ casperjs test.js arg1 arg2 arg3 --foo=bar --plop anotherarg
Casper CLI passed args: [
    "arg1",
    "arg2",
    "arg3",
    "anotherarg"
]
Casper CLI passed options: {
    "casper-path": "/Users/niko/Sites/casperjs",
    "cli": true,
    "foo": "bar",
    "plop": true
}

Getting, checking or dropping parameters:

var casper = require("casper").create();
casper.echo(casper.cli.has(0));
casper.echo(casper.cli.get(0));
casper.echo(casper.cli.has(3));
casper.echo(casper.cli.get(3));
casper.echo(casper.cli.has("foo"));
casper.echo(casper.cli.get("foo"));
casper.cli.drop("foo");
casper.echo(casper.cli.has("foo"));
casper.echo(casper.cli.get("foo"));
casper.exit();

Execution results:

$ casperjs test.js arg1 arg2 arg3 --foo=bar --plop anotherarg
true
arg1
true
anotherarg
true
bar
false
undefined

Hint

What if you want to check if any arg or option has been passed to your script? Here you go:

// removing default options passed by the Python executable
casper.cli.drop("cli");
casper.cli.drop("casper-path");

if (casper.cli.args.length === 0 && Object.keys(casper.cli.options).length === 0) {
    casper.echo("No arg nor option passed").exit();
}

casperjs native options

New in version 1.1.

The casperjs command has three available options:

• --direct: to prints out log messages to the console
• --log-level=[debug|info|warning|error] to set the logging level
• --engine=[phantomjs|slimerjs] to select the browser engine you want to use. CasperJS supports PhantomJS (default) that runs Webkit, and SlimerJS that runs Gecko.

Warning

Deprecated since version 1.1.

--direct option has been renamed to --verbose, though --direct will still works, while is to be considered deprecated.

Example:

$ casperjs --verbose --log-level=debug myscript.js

Last but not least, you can still use all PhantomJS standard CLI options as you would do with any other phantomjs script:

$ casperjs --web-security=no --cookies-file=/tmp/mycookies.txt myscript.js

Hint

To remember what the native phantomjs available cli options are, run the phantomjs --help command. SlimerJS supports almost same options as PhantomJS.

Raw parameter values

New in version 1.0.

By default, the cli object will process every passed argument & cast them to the appropriate detected type; example script:

var casper = require('casper').create();
var utils = require('utils');

utils.dump(casper.cli.get('foo'));

casper.exit();

If you run this script:

$ casperjs c.js --foo=01234567
1234567

As you can see, the 01234567 value has been cast to a Number.

Sometimes, you just want the original string; then you can use the raw property of the cli object, which contains the raw values passed parameters:

var casper = require('casper').create();
var utils = require('utils');

utils.dump(casper.cli.get('foo'));
utils.dump(casper.cli.raw.get('foo'));

casper.exit();

Sample usage:

$ casperjs c.js --foo=01234567
1234567
"01234567"