How to take thumbnail of a website using Ruby?

Ruby
#1

Hello folks,

How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
hosting? There’s no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
screenshot using imagemagick or something else?

Thanks,

  • Dunnil
#2

Human D. wrote:

Hello folks,

How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
hosting? There’s no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
screenshot using imagemagick or something else?

Thanks,

  • Dunnil

I’d be surprised if the first step in the easiest way to do this wasn’t
(1) install an X server.

This is sort of a way to do it using RubyGnome. But again, needs X, Gtk
and Ruby-gnome: http://rubyurl.com/Yjk

There was definitely a website out there that would take pictures of
your page for you, on different platforms, but I can’t seem to find it.
Perhaps it would be possible to hook up with that.

best,
Dan

#3

There’s no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
screenshot

Not only do you need an X-Server to provide the libs to take
screenshots, but you’ll also need it to have something you can take a
screenshot OF. If you can’t display a browser, you can’t take a
screenshot of it.

Are you looking for something like this:
http://www.snap.com/about/spa1B.php or this
http://www.cooliris.com/Site/index.html ?

-Tim

#4

What you need is not to take a picture exactly but rather than
rendering it to a monitor, render it to a file.
You could run some instance of a rendering engine. (Gecko for example)
The easiest way is to simply use a browser but there must be another
way.
This is like Snap and it’s annoying mouseOver popups

#5

On Friday 16 March 2007 06:51, Human D. wrote:

Hello folks,

How could I take a screenshot of a web site using Ruby on a shared
hosting? There’s no X server on the server, is there a way to take a
screenshot using imagemagick or something else?

Thanks,

  • Dunnil

well i’m working on scrpt that an do that, but you probably won’t be
able to
do this without x server.

check this:
http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=about (uses khtml
rendering
engine, not sure if it requires X)
http://pearlcrescent.com/products/pagesaver/ (uses firefox with plugin,
I’m
SURE it requires X+Firefox, poblably no way to install plugin on shared
hosting too)

if you wrtite the script, please share your expirience, you can e-mail
me
directly ^^

Greets

#6

You could render it with links :slight_smile: and no it’s not just text only.
There are several versions of links. In particular the links by
twibright labs http://links.twibright.com/ has a graphical rendering
mode. Since it renders to a frame buffer (and doesn’t need X) you can
probably render to a raw file or somfin instead, then convert to a
png, and viola, screenshot sans X.

Of course yea, geko and konq also could do this, but I don’t know how
common it is to find them detached completely from X.

my 2*$0.01… or what… 2 0.001*euros?

–Kyle