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Environment Variables

All of these are optional and getHtml will work without them all. If you wish to use a remote headless browser service then simply include the API Key and all puppeteer requests will connect to this service. Only BROWSERLESS is currently supported.

HEADLESS  // Optional
NODE_ENV  // Optional
BROWSERLESS_API_KEY  // Optional
BROWSERBASE_API_KEY  // Optional //unsupported
BROWSER_SERVICE  // Optional

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Configuration

There are 3 levels of switches for headless mode:

  1. NODE_ENV environment variable (overrides all, if the NODE_ENV is “production” this overrides all including the headless param in the options & the HEADLESS env )
  2. HEADLESS environment variable (if NODE_ENV is not “production”, HEADLESS env var set to “off” overrides the headless options param.)
  3. headless options param value (default true) can be set to false object passed to getHtml

This logic has specifically been designed to make sure you do not leave headless mode off in production! When testing/debugging locally I change ONLY the HEADLESS param and do not change the headless options param.

HEADLESS="off";

//(headless=true) optional param passed in the options
const IS_PRODUCTION = NODE_ENV === "production";
const SHOW_PUPPETEER = HEADLESS === "off" ? false : headless;

headless: IS_PRODUCTION ? true : SHOW_PUPPETEER,

To configure Waterfall-Fetch, you can set the following environment variables:

BROWSER_SERVICE
string
required

The headless browser service to use (e.g., ‘browserless’ or ‘browserbase’)

BROWSERBASE_API_KEY
string

Your Browserbase API key (currently NOT used)

BROWSERLESS_API_KEY
string

Your Browserless API key

NODE_ENV
string

Set to ‘production’ for production environments

HEADLESS
string

Set to String ‘on’ or ‘off’ to control headless mode

For more advanced usage and configuration options, check out our API Reference.

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