When converting webpages and HTML to PDF GrabzIt's Python API provides the following features that help integrate GrabzIt into your system as easily as possible. However before you start remember that after calling the URLToPDF, HTMLToPDF or FileToPDF methods the Save or SaveTo method must be called to take the PDF screenshot.
Basic Options
Often when converting a webpage into a PDF document many pages will be produced in order to represent the entire webpage. 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 Python handler. For instance this custom identifier could be a database identifier, allowing a screenshot to be associated with a particular database record.
from GrabzIt import GrabzItPDFOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient
grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")
options = GrabzItPDFOptions.GrabzItPDFOptions()
options.customId = "123456"
grabzIt.URLToPDF("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the Save method
grabzIt.Save("http://www.example.com/handler.py")
from GrabzIt import GrabzItPDFOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient
grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")
options = GrabzItPDFOptions.GrabzItPDFOptions()
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.py")
from GrabzIt import GrabzItPDFOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient
grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")
options = GrabzItPDFOptions.GrabzItPDFOptions()
options.customId = "123456"
grabzIt.FileToPDF("example.html", options)
# Then call the Save method
grabzIt.Save("http://www.example.com/handler.py")
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.
from GrabzIt import GrabzItPDFOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient
grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")
options = GrabzItPDFOptions.GrabzItPDFOptions()
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 Python library. You must pass the CSS selector of the HTML element you wish to convert to the targetElement parameter.
... <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.
from GrabzIt import GrabzItPDFOptions
from GrabzIt import GrabzItClient
grabzIt = GrabzItClient.GrabzItClient("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")
options = GrabzItPDFOptions.GrabzItPDFOptions()
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.