phantom-express

phantom-express middleware allows for dynamically created content to be visible to Google crawler. This middleware tests the request for an _escaped_fragment_ query parameter. If the parameter is detected the middleware passes pretty URL to the phantomjs process.

Compatible with requirejs

How to use it?

1. Install phantomjs

   On MAC:

   brew install phantomjs 

   On Ubuntu:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install build-essential chrpath git-core libssl-dev libfontconfig1-dev
   git clone git://github.com/ariya/phantomjs.git
   cd phantomjs
   git checkout 1.9
   ./build.sh

    Warning: ```apt-get``` is having an issue installing recent version of ```phantomjs```. 
    Avoid using ```apt-get install phantomjs```

2. Add middleware to the express

    ```javascript
    var phantomExpress = require("phantom-express");

    app.use(express.query())
    app.use(phantomExpress(options));
    ```

Default options:
```javascript
options = {
    // Currently the middleware caches the response from the
    // phantomjs process in the memory. The parameter defines
    // TTL in seconds. If 0 is passed the cache will be ignored.
    cacheLifetime: 3600

    // Dump status to the console or not
    verbose: false

    // Prepends the string to the pretty generated hash
    // ex. if '!' is defined ->  #!/home/page
    hashPrepend: ''
}

How it works?

The middleware detects if the request URL contains _escaped_fragment_ (ex. http://mysite.com/some/path?_escaped_fragment_=hello/world) query parameter. If so, it parses the request url, generates pretty URL with hash fragment (ex. http://mysite.com/some/path#hello/world) and passes it to the phantomjs proccess.

Step by step process:

• The phantomjs proccess renders the page
• Evaluates javascript code
• Waits 5 seconds after last resource has been received (useful for requirejs)
• Grabs the generated HTML
• Sends it to the Google crawler

More information at: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/specification