phancap - website screenshot service
************************************
-Web service to create website screenshots.
+Web service (API) to create website screenshots.
Self-hosted and written in PHP. Caching included.
+*phancap* is useful for:
+
+- Show screenshots for websites in your bookmarking application
+- Archive a HTML page as PDF for later viewing
+
+
+.. contents::
+
+
+========
+Features
+========
+
+* Configurable browser size
+* Configurable screenshot size
+* Clip and full page rendering (full height)
+* JPG, PNG and PDF output (PDFs are searchable)
+* Authentication
+* Can run on a normal web server without GUI. See dependencies_.
+* Generated images get meta data embedded:
+
+ * URL of captured page
+ * Capture settings
+
+
+.. note::
+ *phancap* does not rely on a "real" browser.
+ Currently ``cutycapt`` is utilized, which uses a pretty bare webkit to render
+ the pages.
+ Do not expect pixel-for-pixel identical rendering as your desktop browser.
+
+
+===============
+Getting started
+===============
+
+Basic setup
+===========
+#. Download the ``.phar`` file and put it onto your web server
+#. Open the phar file in your browser
+
+ If you only see text beginning with ``<?php``, you need to
+ `setup .phar file extension handling`__ in your web server first.
+#. Click the "setup check" link
+#. Fix all errors that are reported
+#. Run ``phancap.phar/get.php?url=cweiske.de`` and see the screenshot
+
+__ http://cweiske.de/tagebuch/phar-webserver.htm
+
+
+Advanced setup
+==============
+With the basic setup, everyone may use your server to create website
+screenshots.
+You may want to change that or simply change some default settings.
+
+#. Create a config file ``phancap.phar.config.php``
+#. Edit it; see the configuration_ options.
+
+
==============
URL parameters
==============
``atoken``
Access token (username)
``asignature``
- Signature for the request. See the authentication section.
+ Signature for the request. See the authentication_ section.
+
+
+=============
+Configuration
+=============
+phancap looks at several places for its configuration file:
+
+#. ``phancap.phar.config.php`` in the same directory as your
+ ``phancap.phar`` file.
+
+#. ``/etc/phancap.php``
+
+
+Configuration variables
+=======================
+``$cacheDir``
+ Full file system path to image cache directory
+``$cacheDirUrl``
+ Full URL to cache directory
+``$access``
+ Credentials for access control
+
+ ``true`` to allow access to anyone, ``false`` to disable it completely.
+ ``array`` of username - secret key combinations otherwise.
+``$cutycapt['parameters']``
+ Additional command line parameters for cutycapt.
+ Can be used to e.g. enable browser plugins:
+
+ ``$cutycapt['parameters'] = '--plugins=on';``
+``$cutycapt['maxWaitTime']``
+ Maximal time in seconds to wait for cutycapt to finish rendering.
+ Defaults to 30 seconds.
+``$disableSetup``
+ Disable ``setup.php`` which will leak file system paths
+``$redirect``
+ Redirect to static image urls after generating them
+``$timestampmaxAge``
+ How long a signature timestamp is considered valid. 2 days default.
+``$screenshotMaxAge``
+ Cache time of downloaded screenshots.
+
+ When the file is as older than this, it gets re-created.
+``$screenshotMinAge``
+ Minimum age of a screeshot. 1 hour default.
+
+ A user cannot set the max age parameter below it.
+
==============
Nobody is allowed to access the service
``array``
A list of usernames that are allowed to request screenshots, together
- with their secret keys (password)
+ with their secret keys (password)::
+
+ $access = array(
+ 'user1' => 'secret1',
+ 'user2' => 'secret2',
+ )
The signature algorithm is as follows:
Example
=======
+
+.. note::
+
+ The ``docs/`` directory contains an example PHP client implementation.
+
We want to create a screenshot of ``http://example.org/`` in size 400x300,
using the browser size of 1024x768::
9a12eac5ff859f9306eaaf5a18b9a931fe10b89d
-This is the signature; it gets appended the URL as ``asignature`` parameter.
+This is the signature; it gets appended to the URL as ``asignature`` parameter.
============
Dependencies
============
-- `cutycapt <http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/>`_
-- imagemagick's ``convert``
-- ``xvfb-run``
-- PEAR's ``System.php``
+- External tools:
+ - `cutycapt <http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/>`_
+ - `exiftool <http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/>`_
+ - `imagemagick's <http://www.imagemagick.org/>`_ ``convert``
+ - ``xvfb-run``
-=======================
-Technical brainstorming
+- Libraries (already included in the ``.phar``):
+
+ - PEAR's ``System.php``
+
+
+=============
+About phancap
+=============
+
+License
+=======
+``phancap`` is licensed under the `AGPL v3`__ or later.
+
+__ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html
+
+
+Homepage
+========
+Web site
+ http://cweiske.de/phancap.htm
+
+Source code
+ http://git.cweiske.de/phancap.git
+
+ Mirror: https://github.com/cweiske/phancap
+
+
+Author
+======
+Written by Christian Weiske, cweiske@cweiske.de
+
+
+============
+Alternatives
+============
+All of those are open source:
+
+* http://code.google.com/p/browsershots/ (python)
+* https://github.com/gre/screenshot-webservice (scala)
+
+
+===========
+Development
+===========
+
+Releasing a new version
=======================
-Tools to make website screenshots
-=================================
-- `cutycapt <http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net/>`_
-- `khtml2png <http://khtml2png.sourceforge.net/>`_ (outdated)
-- `phantomjs <http://phantomjs.org/>`_
-- `python-webkit2png <https://github.com/AdamN/python-webkit2png/>`_
-- `wkhtmltopdf <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/>`_
-- wkhtmltoimage
-
-
-Possible parameters
-===================
-
-Page request parameters
------------------------
-- url
-- bwidth (browser width / resolution)
-- bheight (browser height / resolution)
-- delay (capture X seconds after page loaded)
-- useragent (user agent header string)
-- accepted languages (Accept-Language header)
-- cookie (set cookie data)
-- referer (custom referer header)
-- post data (send POST data as if filled out a form)
-
-Screenshot configuration
-------------------------
-- width (of thumbnail)
-- height (of thumbnail)
-- output format (jpg, png, pdf)
-- mode: screen or page (full page height or screen size only)
- - page aka fullpage
-- quality (jpeg image quality)
-
-Misc
-----
-- callback URL (to notify when screenshot is ready)
-- sync/async (wait for response or just get a 202 accepted)
-- cache (to force a fresh screenshot with cache=0,
- otherwise seconds the cache may be old)
-- api key
-- token (md5 hash of query string)
-
-API parameter sources
----------------------
-- http://api1.thumbalizr.com/
-- http://url2png.com/docs/
-- http://webthumb.bluga.net/apidoc
-- http://www.page2images.com/Create-website-screenshot-online-API
-- http://browshot.com/api/documentation
-
-
-Other website screenshot services
-=================================
-- http://browsershots.org/
-- http://browshot.com/
-- http://ctrlq.org/screenshots/
-- http://grabz.it/
-- http://url2png.com/
-- http://usersnap.com/
-- http://websnapr.com/
-- http://webthumb.bluga.net/
-- http://www.page2images.com/
-- http://www.shrinktheweb.com/
-- http://www.thumbalizr.com/
-- http://www.url2picture.com/
-
-
-Other website screenshot software
-=================================
-- https://github.com/microweber/screen
+#. Update ``ChangeLog``
+#. Change version number in ``build.xml``
+#. Run ``phing``
+#. Deploy the new files in ``dist/``
+#. Tag the new version in git
git.cweiske.de / phancap.git / blobdiff