Question

Is there a command line tool that allows you to get the text of the JavaScript interpreted source of a web page similar to how you can see the interpreted code in FireBug on FireFox?

I would like to use CURL or similar tool to request a web page. The catch is I would like to view how the code has been modified by JavaScript. For instance if the dom has been changed or an element has been modified, I would like to see the modified version. I know FireBug does this for FireFox, but I am looking for a way to script the process.

Answer 1

Have you looked in to tools like PhantomJS for running the tests? Many of them support running a “headless” browser, which lets you render pages and run JS against the rendered page without having to actually run a browser. It doesn’t use curl, but I don’t see why that should be a requirement.

For instance:

$ phantomjs save_page.js http://example.com 

with save_page.js:

var system = require('system');
var page = require('webpage').create();

page.open(system.args[1], function()
{
    console.log(page.content);
    phantom.exit();
});