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Reuse sessions

The best way to improve the performance of your browser rendering worker is to reuse sessions. One way to do that is via Durable Objects, which allows you to keep a long running connection from a worker to a browser. Another way is to keep the browser open after you've finished with it, and connect to that session each time you have a new request.

In short, this entails using browser.disconnect() instead of browser.close(), and, if there are available sessions, using puppeteer.connect(env.MY_BROWSER, sessionID) instead of launching a new browser session.

1. Create a Worker project

Cloudflare Workers provides a serverless execution environment that allows you to create new applications or augment existing ones without configuring or maintaining infrastructure. Your Worker application is a container to interact with a headless browser to do actions, such as taking screenshots.

Create a new Worker project named browser-worker by running:

Terminal window
npm create cloudflare@latest -- browser-worker

For setup, select the following options:

  • For What would you like to start with?, choose Hello World example.
  • For Which template would you like to use?, choose Hello World Worker.
  • For Which language do you want to use?, choose TypeScript.
  • For Do you want to use git for version control?, choose Yes.
  • For Do you want to deploy your application?, choose No (we will be making some changes before deploying).

2. Install Puppeteer

In your browser-worker directory, install Cloudflare’s fork of Puppeteer:

Terminal window
npm install @cloudflare/puppeteer --save-dev

3. Configure wrangler.toml

name = "browser-worker"
main = "src/index.ts"
compatibility_date = "2023-03-14"
compatibility_flags = [ "nodejs_compat" ]


browser = { binding = "MYBROWSER" }

4. Code

The script below starts by fetching the current running sessions. If there are any that don't already have a worker connection, it picks a random session ID and attempts to connect (puppeteer.connect(..)) to it. If that fails or there were no running sessions to start with, it launches a new browser session (puppeteer.launch(..)). Then, it goes to the website and fetches the dom. Once that's done, it disconnects (browser.disconnect()), making the connection available to other workers.

Take into account that if the browser is idle, i.e. does not get any command, for more than the current limit, it will close automatically, so you must have enough requests per minute to keep it alive.

import puppeteer from "@cloudflare/puppeteer";


interface Env {
  MYBROWSER: Fetcher;
}


export default {
  async fetch(request: Request, env: Env): Promise<Response> {
    const url = new URL(request.url);
    let reqUrl = url.searchParams.get("url") || "https://example.com";
    reqUrl = new URL(reqUrl).toString(); // normalize


    // Pick random session from open sessions
    let sessionId = await this.getRandomSession(env.MYBROWSER);
    let browser, launched;
    if (sessionId) {
      try {
        browser = await puppeteer.connect(env.MYBROWSER, sessionId);
      } catch (e) {
        // another worker may have connected first
        console.log(`Failed to connect to ${sessionId}. Error ${e}`);
      }
    }
    if (!browser) {
      // No open sessions, launch new session
      browser = await puppeteer.launch(env.MYBROWSER);
      launched = true;
    }


    sessionId = browser.sessionId(); // get current session id


    // Do your work here
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    const response = await page.goto(reqUrl);
    const html = await response!.text();


    // All work done, so free connection (IMPORTANT!)
    await browser.disconnect();


    return new Response(
      `${launched ? "Launched" : "Connected to"} ${sessionId} \n-----\n` + html,
      {
        headers: {
          "content-type": "text/plain",
        },
      },
    );
  },


  // Pick random free session
  // Other custom logic could be used instead
  async getRandomSession(endpoint: puppeteer.BrowserWorker): Promise<string> {
    const sessions: puppeteer.ActiveSession[] =
      await puppeteer.sessions(endpoint);
    console.log(`Sessions: ${JSON.stringify(sessions)}`);
    const sessionsIds = sessions
      .filter((v) => {
        return !v.connectionId; // remove sessions with workers connected to them
      })
      .map((v) => {
        return v.sessionId;
      });
    if (sessionsIds.length === 0) {
      return;
    }


    const sessionId =
      sessionsIds[Math.floor(Math.random() * sessionsIds.length)];


    return sessionId!;
  },
};

Besides puppeteer.sessions(), we've added other methods to facilitate Session Management.

5. Test

Run npx wrangler dev --remote to test your Worker remotely before deploying to Cloudflare's global network. Local mode support does not exist for Browser Rendering so --remote is required.

To test go to the following URL:

<LOCAL_HOST_URL>/?url=https://example.com

6. Deploy

Run npx wrangler deploy to deploy your Worker to the Cloudflare global network and then to go to the following URL:

<YOUR_WORKER>.<YOUR_SUBDOMAIN>.workers.dev/?url=https://example.com

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