install_phantomjs: Install PhantomJS

Description

Download the zip package, unzip it, and copy the executable to a system directory in which webshot can look for the PhantomJS executable.

Usage

install_phantomjs(
  version = "2.1.1",
  baseURL = "https://github.com/wch/webshot/releases/download/v0.3.1/",
  force = FALSE
)

Value

NULL (the executable is written to a system directory).

Arguments

version: The version number of PhantomJS.
baseURL: The base URL for the location of PhantomJS binaries for download. If the default download site is unavailable, you may specify an alternative mirror, such as "https://bitbucket.org/ariya/phantomjs/downloads/".
force: Install PhantomJS even if the version installed is the latest or if the requested version is older. This is useful to reinstall or downgrade the version of PhantomJS.

Details

This function was designed primarily to help Windows users since it is cumbersome to modify the PATH variable. Mac OS X users may install PhantomJS via Homebrew. If you download the package from the PhantomJS website instead, please make sure the executable can be found via the PATH variable.

On Windows, the directory specified by the environment variable APPDATA is used to store phantomjs.exe. On OS X, the directory ~/Library/Application Support is used. On other platforms (such as Linux), the directory ~/bin is used. If these directories are not writable, the directory PhantomJS under the installation directory of the webshot package will be tried. If this directory still fails, you will have to install PhantomJS by yourself.

If PhantomJS is not already installed on the computer, this function will attempt to install it. However, if the version of PhantomJS installed is greater than or equal to the requested version, this function will not perform the installation procedure again unless the force parameter is set to TRUE. As a result, this function may also be used to reinstall or downgrade the version of PhantomJS found.