Initialize a Browser

Initialize a Browser

In this guide, we will initialize a Bytebot-managed remote browser. If you want to use a local Puppeteer instance instead, click here.

Initialize Bytebot

To start, you will need to import the Bytebot SDK. If you haven’t installed Bytebot yet, please refer to our installation guide.

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import { BytebotClient } from '@bytebot/sdk';

The BytebotClient includes all of the functions needed to start a browser session and create any browser actions. Its constructor requires an API key to be successfully initialized.

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import { BytebotClient } from '@bytebot/sdk';
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const bytebot = new BytebotClient({    
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  apiKey: process.env.BYTEBOT_API_KEY, 
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});    

If you are using a .env, you may need to install dotenv to import it.

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import { BytebotClient } from '@bytebot/sdk';
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import 'dotenv/config'
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const bytebot = new BytebotClient({
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  apiKey: process.env.BYTEBOT_API_KEY,
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});

Start a Session

Before generating and executing a browser action, you will need to start a browser session. To start a browser session, use BytebotClient.browser.startSession(url: string) , where the url is the initial page on the browser.

If successful, the function will return an object with a sessionId attribute.

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import { BytebotClient } from '@bytebot/sdk';
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import 'dotenv/config'
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const bytebot = new BytebotClient({
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  apiKey: process.env.BYTEBOT_API_KEY,
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});
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async function run() {
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  const browser = await bytebot.browser.startSession(
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    "https://developer.chrome.com/"
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  );
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  if (browser.sessionId) {
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    //success! 
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  }
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}
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run().catch(console.error);

End a Session

Once you are done with your browser, you should end your session to destroy the browser. To end a browser session, use BytebotClient.endSession(sessionId: string) , where the sessionId is a string of the session’s identifier.

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import { Table, Column, Attribute, Text, BytebotClient } from "./src/index.ts";
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import "dotenv/config";
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const bytebot = new BytebotClient({
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  apiKey: process.env.BYTEBOT_API_KEY,
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});
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async function run() {
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  const browser = await bytebot.browser.startSession(
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    "https://www.ycombinator.com/companies"
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  );
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  if (browser.sessionId) {
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    //logic 
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    bytebot.browser.endSession(browser.sessionId);
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  }
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}
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run().catch(console.error);

When successful, the function will return an object with a sessionId of the closed browser or an error represented as a string.

With the basics down, you are now ready to create actions and extract data.