19 February 2014

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

Written by Rahul K.

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:

&lt;?php

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

<?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,

&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;

<?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 = "/usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage --no-images --load-error-handling ignore";

$dir_img = "/var/www/html/getImage/images/"; // Image files will be saved here

$ex_cmd = "$command $weburl " . $dir_img . $name;

$output = shell_exec($ex_cmd);

echo "<img src="/getImage/images/$name" >"; // comment this to disable image show on page

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

Rahul K.

I, Rahul Kumar is the founder and chief editor of TecAdmin.net. I am Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and working as IT professional since 2009.

5 Comments

Ft Farhad Reply to Ft

February 24, 2016 at 7:16 am

Really php is a allrounder language.
Domus Reply to Domus

May 12, 2014 at 11:47 am

Hi, great article although if you don’t want to worry about scalability and managing your own service you could use a free third-party service. Like GrabzIt’s PHP API: http://grabz.it/api/php/
omar Reply to omar

April 24, 2014 at 3:00 pm

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
omar Reply to omar

April 24, 2014 at 10:55 am

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
- Rahul Reply to Rahul
  
  April 24, 2014 at 12:30 pm
  
  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.