How can I take a screenshot of a website with PHP and GD?

Question

How can I create a screenshot of a website using PHP and the GD library.

Cryology

Open challenge? This isn't a code-writing site. – Salaried

You can use thumbshots.org – Displume

Answer 1

While you might be able to do something with imagegrabscreen or imagegrabwindow you'd only be able to use it on a Windows box, and even then it would be tricky.

You'd have to open a browser window to the specified url (you could do that with exec) and grab a screenshot using the aforementioned methods.

Here's an example from the manual entry for imagegrabwindow:

<?php
$browser = new COM("InternetExplorer.Application");
$handle = $browser->HWND;
$browser->Visible = true;
$browser->Navigate("http://www.libgd.org");

/* Still working? */
while ($browser->Busy) {
    com_message_pump(4000);
}
$im = imagegrabwindow($handle, 0);
$browser->Quit();
imagepng($im, "iesnap.png");
imagedestroy($im);
?>

Salaried

Hi Ross, the code above gives following error/Warning PHP Warning: Module 'gd' already loaded in Unknown on line 0 PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'com_exception' with message 'Failed to create COM object `InternetExplorer.Application': Access is denied. ' – Cryology

I'm having trouble even getting imagegrabscreen to work. As I said, I only copied that code from the manual. All I can suggest is that you follow the note on php.net/imagegrabscreen (assuming you're using Apache). – Salaried

(Note that on Vista enabling Apache desktop support, restarting the service and the server still does not work) – Salaried

Answer 2

Website is rendered on client side, while PHP and GD are server side. You may also check this website out. Hope it helps.

Cavicorn

Thanks for the link, it works, expect that HTML5/canvas is not implemented. This solution works better. – Dap