Use Python to Render HTML to Images - Website Screenshots

GrabzIt's Python API lets you take screenshots of websites or convert HTML to images easily. Perfect for creating image screenshots. Remember to call the Save or SaveTo method after using URLToImage, HTMLToImage or FileToImage methods to capture a screenshot.

Basic Options

Only one parameter is required in order to take a screenshot of a web page or convert HTML into a image as shown in the following example.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

grabzIt.URLToImage("https://www.tesla.com")
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method

grabzIt.HTMLToImage("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>")
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method

grabzIt.FileToImage("example.html")
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method

Image Formats

GrabzIt's Python API can take image screenshots in several formats, including JPG, PNG, WEBP, BMP (8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit or 32 bit) and TIFF. The default format for image screenshots is JPG. However the quality of a JPG image may not be good enough for some applications in these circumstances the PNG format is recommended for image screenshots as it gives a good balance between quality and file size. The below example shows an image screenshot being taken using the PNG format.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.format = "png"

grabzIt.URLToImage("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.png")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.format = "png"

grabzIt.HTMLToImage("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.png")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.format = "png"

grabzIt.FileToImage("example.html", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.png")

Browser Size

The browser size refers to the size of the browser window that will be used when capturing the screenshot in most cases this does not need to be set as the default browser size will be sufficent for all most all tasks. To use the default browser size just pass 0 to the browserWidth and browserHeight attributes of the GrabzItImageOptions class.

Change Image Size

Changing the size of an image is easy, doing it without distorting the image is a bit harder. To make the whole process simpler we recommend you use this simple image dimension calculator.

If you want to increase the image width and height to a size larger than the browser width and height, which by default is 1366 by 728 pixels, the browser width and height must also be increased to match.

Custom Identifier

You can pass a custom identifier to the image methods as shown below, this value is then returned to your GrabzIt Python handler. For instance this custom identifier could be a database identifier, allowing a screenshot to be associated with a particular database record.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzIt.URLToImage("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the Save method
grabzIt.Save("http://www.example.com/handler.py")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzIt.HTMLToImage("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the Save method
grabzIt.Save("http://www.example.com/handler.py")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzIt.FileToImage("example.html", options)
# Then call the Save method
grabzIt.Save("http://www.example.com/handler.py")

Full Length Screenshot

GrabzIt allows you to take a full length screenshot of an entire web page to do this you need to pass a -1 to the browserHeight attribute. To ensure the image matches the size of the browser this pass a -1 to the height and width attributes.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.URLToImage("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.HTMLToImage("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.FileToImage("example.html", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

You can also return thumbnails that are not cropped, but beware this can create large images. To do this pass a -1 to the height and/or width attributes. The dimension that is passed a -1 will not be cropped.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.URLToImage("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.HTMLToImage("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzIt.FileToImage("example.html", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

Note there is no full length browser width!

Using these special values means that you can create a screenshot that is a full scale version of the entire web page if you wish!

Take a Screenshot of a Page Element

GrabzIt allows you to capture a HTML element as a image, such as a div or span tag, and capture all its content. To do this the HTML element you want to screenshot must be specified as a CSS selector.

...
<div id="features">
	<img src="http://www.example.com/race.jpg"/><h3>Car Race Tommorow</h3>
</div>
...

For the example below we will select the div with the id "features" and output it as a 250 x 250px JPEG image.

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

# The 250 parameters indicates that image should be sized to 250 x 250 px
options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.width = 250
options.height = 250
options.format = "jpg"
options.targetElement = "#features"

grabzIt.URLToImage("http://www.bbc.co.uk/news", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")

The next example takes another screenshot of the "features" div but this time outputs a JPEG image that is the exact size of the div.

from GrabzIt import GrabzItImageOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient

grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

# The -1 indicates that image should not be cropped
options = GrabzItImageOptions.GrabzItImageOptions()
options.width = 250
options.height = 250
options.browserHeight = -1
options.format = "jpg"
options.targetElement = "#features"

grabzIt.URLToImage("http://www.bbc.co.uk/news", options)
# Then call the Save or SaveTo method
grabzIt.SaveTo("result.jpg")