How to Create Screenshots of Websites (html) with PHP Script and Linux Command LIne

    RahulBy 2 Mins Read

    Wkhtmltoimage is a very useful application to create screenshot of a website or webpage. Some times we required to create an screenshot of webpages and store to our system. It uses QT Webkit rendering engine for creating images in various formats. This article will help to capture screenshots of a webpage using php script and Linux command line.

    Step 1: Install wkhtmltoimage in Linux

    Download wkhtmltoimage from google code and install on your linux system using following steps.

    # cd /opt
# wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/wkhtmltopdf/0.12.0/wkhtmltox-linux-i386_0.12.0-03c001d.tar.xz
# tar xJf wkhtmltox-linux-i386_0.12.0-03c001d.tar.xz
# ln -s /opt/wkhtmltox/bin/wkhtmltoimage /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage
# chown apache:apache /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage
# chmod +x /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage

    Step 2: Create Image Using Command Line

    First check wkhtmltoimage script using linux command line. Following command will take screen shot of http://google.com and create and image with name google.jpg.

    # /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage --no-images --load-error-handling ignore http://google.com google.jpg

    Step 3: PHP Code to Create Image

    Use following php code to generate image from html ( website url ). This script required to be enabled shell_exec function for Apache. Most of shared hosting providers doesn’t allow’s this function.

    Create a file name getImage.php and put below code:

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    <?php
     
    $url = $_GET['url'];    // Website URL to Create Image
    $name = $_GET['img'];   // Output Image Name
    $command = "/usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage --no-images --load-error-handling ignore";
    $dir_img = "/var/www/html/images/";     // Image files will be saved here
    $ex_cmd = "$command $url " . $dir_img . $name;
    $output = shell_exec($ex_cmd);
    ?>

    Use following syntex or demo url to generate image of website ( html ).

    Syntax:

    http://youdomain.com/getImage.php?url=<website url>&img=<image name>

    Example:

    https://tecadmin.net/getImage.php?url=http://google.com&img=image1.jpg

    Step 4: PHP Script for SEO Friendly URL

    If you want to create SEO friendly URL for this setup, you can use below steps.

    Create few required directories in your web server document root

    # mkdir -p /var/www/html/getImage/
# mkdir -p /var/www/html/getImage/images/

    Create index.php file with following content. Make sure all directory path are correct,

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    &lt;?php
     
    $url = str_replace('index.php','', $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);
    $url = str_replace($url,'',$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
    $url = explode('/',$url);
    $name = array_shift($url);
    $weburl = array_shift($url);
     
    $command = &quot;/usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage --no-images --load-error-handling ignore&quot;;
    $dir_img = &quot;/var/www/html/getImage/images/&quot;;     // Image files will be saved here
    $ex_cmd = &quot;$command $weburl &quot; . $dir_img . $name;
    $output = shell_exec($ex_cmd);
    echo &quot;&lt;img src=&quot;/getImage/images/$name&quot; &gt;&quot;;  // comment this to disable image show on page
     
    ?&gt;

    Now create a .htaccess file in this directory to move all requests to index.php file. make sure you server is enabled to use .htaccess file.

    # vi /var/www/html/getImage/.htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /images/.+(gif|png|jpg)$
RewriteRule .* - [L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php

    Now you can create images by accessing urls like below

    Syntax:

     http://youdomain.com/getImage/[imagename]/[site url without http prefix]

    Example:

     https://tecadmin.net/getImage/123.jpg/yahoo.com
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    7 Comments

    1. Cric on

      Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your weblog and wished to say
      that I have truly enjoyed browsing your blog posts.

      After all I will be subscribing to your feed and I hope you
      write again soon!

      Reply
    5. omar on

      Hello again!

      Thank you for fast answers!

      This updated steps helped me yes but there is one thing.

      If you want to run this the link from another website so I would do this:

      in my case:
      <img src="/getimages/.jpg/” />
      I get error on the main site and it’s look like I am loading image that dosen’t exists.

      So is there any change to make the url http://thedomain.com/getimages/somedomain.com.jpg/somedomain.com be an image, not php file.

      Like this:
      s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http://google.com <– You cannot veiw the source cause it's image 🙂

      Regards

      Reply
    6. omar on

      Hello.

      Thx for this advise.

      is there any possible way to let the script work that like this one:
      s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http://google.com

      I could use it like this in your way with mydomain.com/getImage.php?url=http://$getDomain&img=$getDomain

      but if I do this way then the image will now show on that url, I would like to make the url (the image) like the s.wordpress.com does.

      Thanks

      Reply
      • Rahul on

        Hi Omar,

        We have updated the article, and added Step #4, I hope that will fulfill your requirement.

        Also there are little changes in Step 1, to download latest binaries.

        Reply

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