Asp Forum - How to take thumbnail of a website using Ruby?

Human Dunnil

3/16/2007 6:52:00 AM

Hello folks,

How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
hosting? There's no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
screenshot using imagemagick or something else?

Thanks,
- Dunnil

5 Answers

Daniel Lucraft

3/16/2007 9:29:00 AM

Human Dunnil wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
> hosting? There's no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
> screenshot using imagemagick or something else?
>
> Thanks,
> - Dunnil

I'd be surprised if the first step in the easiest way to do this wasn't
(1) install an X server.

This is sort of a way to do it using RubyGnome. But again, needs X, Gtk
and Ruby-gnome: http://rubyu...

There was definitely a website out there that would take pictures of
your page for you, on different platforms, but I can't seem to find it.
Perhaps it would be possible to hook up with that.

best,
Dan

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Tim Becker

3/16/2007 10:09:00 AM

> There's no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
> screenshot

Not only do you need an X-Server to provide the libs to take
screenshots, but you'll also need it to have something you can take a
screenshot OF. If you can't display a browser, you can't take a
screenshot of it.

Are you looking for something like this:
http://www.snap.com/about... or this
http://www.cooliris.com/Site/... ?

-Tim

Marcin Raczkowski

3/16/2007 11:28:00 AM

On Friday 16 March 2007 06:51, Human Dunnil wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
> hosting? There's no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
> screenshot using imagemagick or something else?
>
> Thanks,
> - Dunnil

well i'm working on scrpt that an do that, but you probably won't be able to
do this without x server.

check this:
http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/index.php?... (uses khtml rendering
engine, not sure if it requires X)
http://pearlcrescent.com/products/... (uses firefox with plugin, I'm
SURE it requires X+Firefox, poblably no way to install plugin on shared
hosting too)

if you wrtite the script, please share your expirience, you can e-mail me
directly ^^

Greets

John Joyce

3/16/2007 12:14:00 PM

What you need is not to take a picture exactly but rather than
rendering it to a monitor, render it to a file.
You could run some instance of a rendering engine. (Gecko for example)
The easiest way is to simply use a browser but there must be another
way.
This is like Snap and it's annoying mouseOver popups
On Mar 16, 2007, at 6:28 PM, Daniel Lucraft wrote:

> Human Dunnil wrote:
>> Hello folks,
>>
>> How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
>> hosting? There's no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
>> screenshot using imagemagick or something else?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> - Dunnil
>
> I'd be surprised if the first step in the easiest way to do this
> wasn't
> (1) install an X server.
>
> This is sort of a way to do it using RubyGnome. But again, needs X,
> Gtk
> and Ruby-gnome: http://rubyu...
>
> There was definitely a website out there that would take pictures of
> your page for you, on different platforms, but I can't seem to find
> it.
> Perhaps it would be possible to hook up with that.
>
> best,
> Dan
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-....
>

Kyle Schmitt

3/16/2007 1:37:00 PM

You could render it with links :) and no it's not just text only.
There are several versions of links. In particular the links by
twibright labs http://links.twib... has a graphical rendering
mode. Since it renders to a frame buffer (and doesn't need X) you can
probably render to a raw file or somfin instead, then convert to a
png, and viola, screenshot sans X.

Of course yea, geko and konq also could do this, but I don't know how
common it is to find them detached completely from X.

my 2*$0.01... or what... 2 0.001*euros?

--Kyle

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