LivecastServer enables serving of browser snapshots via web sockets. It includes its own client
that provides a simple frontend to viewing the captured snapshots. A snapshot consists of three
pieces of information, the currently opened URL, the content of the page (HTML) and its screenshot.
{
"pageUrl": "https://www.example.com",
"htmlContent": "<html><body> ....",
"screenshotIndex": 3,
"createdAt": "2019-04-18T11:50:40.060Z"
}LivecastServer is useful when you want to be able to inspect the current browser status on demand.
When no client is connected, the webserver consumes very low resources so it should have a close
to zero impact on performance. Only once a client connects the server will start serving snapshots.
Once no longer needed, it can be disabled again in the client to remove any performance impact.
NOTE: Screenshot taking in browser typically takes around 300ms. So having the LivecastServer
always serve snapshots will have a significant impact on performance.
It will take snapshots of the first page of the latest browser. Taking snapshots of only a
single page improves performance and stability dramatically in high concurrency situations.
When running locally, it is often best to use a headful browser for debugging, since it provides
a better view into the browser, including DevTools, but LivecastServer works too.
const Server = require('LivecastServer');