Catalyst SmartBrowz - A Quick Start Guide

Catalyst SmartBrowz is a powerful cloud service that you can leverage to perform browser automation tasks, functionality tests, and generate visual documents. This section covers the overall steps involved in getting started with connecting to a remote browser in the Catalyst cloud environment, managing it with automation libraries, leveraging the SmartBrowz components to generate visual documents of webpages, and so much more. You can also engineer Serverless functions that contain a logic to implement browser tasks.

Create a Project

1. Catalyst console to create a new project. After the project creation is complete, you will be able to access all components of SmartBrowz and other Catalyst services from the console.

Access Catalyst SmartBrowz Components

2. You can use the Headless component to connect to a remote browser powered by Catalyst cloud environment with popular browser automation libraries using the code snippets and the appropriate endpoints present in the console.

   • If you are going to use automation libraries like Selenium, then you need to connect using the Webdriver endpoint.
   • If you are going to use Puppetteer or Playwright, you need to connect using the CDP endpoint.

3. You can test out any of the Code Recipes present in the console by copying and pasting them in your Browser Logic function.

4. You can use the PDF & Screenshots component to generate visual content by providing the required input though HTML, URL or Template using the Playground present in the console. You can also use the SDK and API present in the console to generate PDF and Screenshots programmatically.

5. You can use the Templates component to design and store templates to generate visual documents with dynamic content. You can find out how to use Templates in this help document.

You can familiarize yourself with the various components of SmartBrowz by going through tutorials present in this section.

Engineer Your Application

6. You can initialize the project locally using the Catalyst CLI, and start coding your business logic into Catalyst Serverless Functions, with either Java, Node.js, or Python, using an external IDE of your choice, or directly create them in the console. You can also utilize code templates from Catalyst SDK and employ prebuilt API endpoints from Catalyst API to incorporate Cloud Scale components in your business logic. You also have the option to use Catalyst CodeLib, which are ready-made microservices that can be incorporated into application directly. You can also enhance your application using AI/ML powered components of Catalyst Zia Services.

Test The Application

7. You can test the client components of your application locally before deploying it to the remote console using catalyst serve. You can also debug and test your functions using the catalyst shell command; catalyst functions:shell.

Deploy The Application

8. You can now deploy your application from the CLI to your project in the remote console using the CLI command catalyst deploy. You can deploy your functions, client, and app services.

Migrate Your Application from Development to Production

9. When your application is ready to be migrated, you can deploy it from the development to the production environment in a streamlined manner as instructed in this help document, and you can use the Domain Mappings component to map your application’s production URL onto your own custom domain securely. Additionally, Catalyst will provide group SSL certifications for all the domain that you map under your application, free of cost. However, before you deploy to production ensure you have set up Catalyst payments.