GrabzIt's Perl API provides the following features to make creating PDF screenshots and converting HTML straight to PDF as easy as possible to integrate into your app. However before you start remember that after calling the URLToPDF, HTMLToPDF or FileToPDF methods the Save or SaveTo method must be called to actually create the PDF.
Basic Options
When a webpage is converted into PDF the entire web page is captured, which can result in a PDF document of potentially many pages. Only one parameter is required in order to convert a web page into a PDF document or to convert HTML to PDF as shown in the below examples.
$grabzIt->URLToPDF("https://www.tesla.com");
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->HTMLToPDF("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>");
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->FileToPDF("example.html");
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
Custom Identifier
You can pass a custom identifier to the PDF methods as shown below, this value is then returned to your GrabzIt Perl handler. For instance this custom identifier could be a database identifier, allowing a screenshot to be associated with a particular database record.
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->customId("123456");
$grabzIt->URLToPDF("https://www.tesla.com", $options);
# Then call the Save method
$grabzIt->Save("http://www.example.com/handler.pl");
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->customId("123456");
$grabzIt->HTMLToPDF("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", $options);
# Then call the Save method
$grabzIt->Save("http://www.example.com/handler.pl");
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->customId("123456");
$grabzIt->FileToPDF("example.html", $options);
# Then call the Save method
$grabzIt->Save("http://www.example.com/handler.pl");
Headers and Footers
When you create a PDF screenshot you can request that you want to apply a particular template to the generated PDF. This template must be saved in advance and will specify the contents of the header and footer along with any special variables. In the example code below the user is using their template called "my template".
If there is not a large enough top or bottom margin for the header or footer respectively, it will not appear in the PDF. In the below example we have set the top and bottom margins to 20 to provide plenty of space.
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->marginTop(20);
$options->marginBottom(20);
$options->templateId("my template");
$grabzIt->URLToPDF("https://www.tesla.com", $options);
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->SaveTo("result.pdf");
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->marginTop(20);
$options->marginBottom(20);
$options->templateId("my template");
$grabzIt->HTMLToPDF("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", $options);
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->SaveTo("result.pdf");
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->marginTop(20);
$options->marginBottom(20);
$options->templateId("my template");
$grabzIt->FileToPDF("example.html", $options);
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->SaveTo("result.pdf");
Convert HTML element to PDF
If you want to just convert a HTML element such as a div or span directly into a PDF document you can with GrabzIt's Perl library. You must pass the CSS selector of the HTML element you wish to convert to the targetElement method.
... <span id="Article"> <p>This is the content I am interested in.</p> <img src="myimage.jpg"> </span> ...
In this example, we wish to capture all the content in the span which has the id of Article, therefore we pass this to GrabzIt as shown below.
$grabzIt = GrabzItClient->new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret");
$options = GrabzItPDFOptions->new();
$options->targetElement("#Article");
$grabzIt->URLToPDF("http://www.bbc.co.uk/news", $options);
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
$grabzIt->SaveTo("result.pdf");
How a PDF is cropped when targeting a HTML element can be controlled using these techniques.