Capture Website Screenshots or Convert HTML to Images

Produce better image screenshots of webpages or convert HTML straight to images by using the following features of GrabzIt's Ruby API. However before you start remember that after calling the url_to_image, html_to_image or file_to_image methods the save or save_to method must be called to create the image.

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

grabzItClient.url_to_image("https://www.tesla.com")
# Then call the save or save_to method

grabzItClient.html_to_image("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>")
# Then call the save or save_to method

grabzItClient.file_to_image("example.html")
# Then call the save or save_to method

Image Formats

GrabzIt's Ruby 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

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.format = "png"

grabzItClient.url_to_image("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.png")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.format = "png"

grabzItClient.html_to_image("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.png")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.format = "png"

grabzItClient.file_to_image("example.html", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("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 set the browser size just pass a value to the browserWidth and browserHeight methods of the ImageOptions 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 Ruby 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

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzItClient.url_to_image("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the save method
grabzItClient.save("http://www.example.com/handler/index")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzItClient.html_to_image("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the save method
grabzItClient.save("http://www.example.com/handler/index")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.customId = "123456"

grabzItClient.file_to_image("example.html", options)
# Then call the save method
grabzItClient.save("http://www.example.com/handler/index")

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 method. 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

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.url_to_image("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.jpg")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.html_to_image("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.jpg")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.browserHeight = -1
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.file_to_image("example.html", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("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 methods. The dimension that is passed a -1 will not be cropped.

URL to Image
HTML to Image
File to Image

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.url_to_image("https://www.tesla.com", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.jpg")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.html_to_image("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.jpg")

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

options = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.width = -1
options.height = -1

grabzItClient.file_to_image("example.html", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("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 take a screenshot of a HTML element, 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/rocket.jpg"/><h3>Rocket Launch Next Week</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.

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("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 = GrabzIt::ImageOptions.new()
options.width = 250
options.height = 250
options.format = "jpg"
options.targetElement = "#features"

grabzItClient.url_to_image("http://www.bbc.co.uk/news", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("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.

grabzItClient = GrabzIt::Client.new("Sign in to view your Application Key", "Sign in to view your Application Secret")

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

grabzItClient.url_to_image("http://www.bbc.co.uk/news", options)
# Then call the save or save_to method
grabzItClient.save_to("result.jpg")