HTML to Image

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
[quote author="jdfwarrior" date="1242337263"][quote author="slowgary" date="1242336933"]So why not just throw a windows server onto your network and use imagegrabscreen()? You could use it only for screencaps.[/quote]

Because implementing may be really easy, and would turn out a lot cheaper than buying another machine just to be able to make screenshots?? Who would wanna do that? That's crazy.[/quote]

Because if you'll be needing a lot of screenshots, it may be a good idea to have a dedicated server for that purpose anyways. If you're hosting this as a service, is a few hundred dollars for a PC really too expensive?

Anyways, it's just one option. I always prefer linux servers to windows. I'm sure it can be done with a few system calls, but wouldn't you also need to be running a GUI to take the screenshot? In my experience, linux servers sometimes become less reliable with a GUI running.

[eluser]slowgary[/eluser]
[quote author="chandlerou" date="1242334831"]I'm looking to create and host this myself, not relying on other services such as browsers shots servers etc...[/quote]

I think your server would need to be running a GUI, and you'd do it with a few command lines called by PHP's exec().

You could also use something like html2ps, I think it's basically a browser. It processes all HTML/CSS & images and renders the page just like a browser would. There are some downsides to this method though. Using html2ps will provide a render unlike any other browser. So you couldn't tell your users "This screenshot taken in Firefox". A command line would allow you to take the screenshots in different browsers. Also, if development of html2ps ends, you may in the future find yourself in a position where your service cannot render pages using the latest standards, whereas with issuing system calls you could just upgrade the browser.

It comes down to what your intentions are.

[eluser]chandlerou[/eluser]
[quote author="slowgary" date="1242337787"][quote author="jdfwarrior" date="1242337263"][quote author="slowgary" date="1242336933"]So why not just throw a windows server onto your network and use imagegrabscreen()? You could use it only for screencaps.[/quote]

Because implementing may be really easy, and would turn out a lot cheaper than buying another machine just to be able to make screenshots?? Who would wanna do that? That's crazy.[/quote]

Because if you'll be needing a lot of screenshots, it may be a good idea to have a dedicated server for that purpose anyways. If you're hosting this as a service, is a few hundred dollars for a PC really too expensive?

Anyways, it's just one option. I always prefer linux servers to windows. I'm sure it can be done with a few system calls, but wouldn't you also need to be running a GUI to take the screenshot? In my experience, linux servers sometimes become less reliable with a GUI running.[/quote]

There are ways to have linux capture it without a gui that I've read, but back to the OP. I didn't know if any gurus came across it in their ventures within a PHP environment, running on a web host.

The reason I posted it here, is beacuse my plan was to code it within the CI environment, figuring it to be relativley easy to create a helper to accomplish this (With the hopes of some PHP extension). But it appears that this is going to be a lot harder to implement.