Taking website screenshot, server-side, on a Linux rented server, free

Question

Ok so, right now I can't really afford to pay for any service. I want to be able to take screenshots using my rented server, which is Linux based, and output them on the screen.

I know there are a lot of services that do this, but they usually have limits or watermarks, or you have to wait for your screenshot to be taken from the queue.

Is there any way to just take the screenshots myself and maybe later cache them or anything? I'm using PHP, but I'm not limited to it; I'm just on a Linux server so GD's appropriate functions wouldn't work. Help! :)

Synonymize

Answer 1

PhantomJs is the solution

if(phantom.state.length === 0){
  phantom.state = '0_home';
  phantom.open('http://www.mini.de');
}
else if(phantom.state === '0_home'){
  phantom.viewportSize = {width: 800, height: 600};
  phantom.sleep(2000);
  phantom.render('home.png');
  phantom.exit(0);
}

Verena

I think phantomjs should work no problem. If webkit can render the page, phantomjs should be able to take a screenshot. – Verena

Answer 2

http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/

CutyCapt is a small cross-platform command-line utility to capture WebKit's rendering of a web page into a variety of vector and bitmap formats, including SVG, PDF, PS, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and BMP.

There is no PHP-api, but you can always use it through PHP's exec functions.

Snide

Think I'd be able to run it with a hosted server? – Synonymize

Timthumb provides access to cutycapt, which may help with the "no PHP-api" problem. – Dimerous

Answer 3

Here is a better script using phantomJS 1.5

var page = require('webpage').create();

page.open('http://www.google.com', function() {

    page.viewportSize = {width: 1024, height: 768};
    page.render('screenshot.png');
    phantom.exit();
});

Sibert

Brad: you might need PhantomJS 1.5. On that version this worked fine with me. – Bloemfontein

You're right.. This will only work on version 1.5 Thanks for clarifying. – Sibert

Answer 4

One of the solutions in 2017:

https://github.com/GoogleChrome/puppeteer

example:

const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');

(async() => {

const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await page.screenshot({path: 'example.png'});

browser.close();
})();

Seagoing

Answer 5

Since you have your own Linux server, the best way is to run your own screenshot service without limitation. Here is an easy solution to run it on your server: https://github.com/filovirid/screenshot_server

It creates an API so that you can access it from everywhere.

Ancilin