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Convert a webpage to an image or pdf using headless Chrome

The package can convert a webpage to an image or pdf. The conversion is done behind the scenes by Puppeteer which controls a headless version of Google Chrome.

Here's a quick example:

It will save a pdf if the path passed to the save method has a pdf extension.

You can also use an arbitrary html input, simply replace the url method with html:

Browsershot also can get the body of an html page after JavaScript has been executed:

Spatie is a webdesign agency in Antwerp, Belgium. You'll find an overview of all our open source projects on our website.

Requirements

This package requires node 7.6.0 or higher and the Puppeteer Node library.

On MacOS you can install Puppeteer in your project via NPM:

Or you could opt to just install it globally

On a Forge provisioned Ubuntu 16.04 server you can install the latest stable version of Chrome like this:

Custom node and npm binaries

Depending on your setup, node or npm might be not directly available to Browsershot. If you need to manually set these binary paths, you can do this by calling the setNodeBinary and setNpmBinary method.

By default, Browsershot will use node and npm to execute commands.

Custom include path

If you don't want to manually specify binary paths, but rather modify the include path in general, you can set it using the setIncludePath method.

Setting the include path can be useful in cases where node and npm can not be found automatically.

Custom node module path

If you want to use an alternative node_modules source you can set it using the setNodeModulePath method.

Custom binary path

If you want to use an alternative script source you can set it using the setBinPath method.

Custom chrome/chromium executable path

If you want to use an alternative chrome or chromium executable from what is installed by puppeteer you can set it using the setChromePath method.

Pass custom arguments to Chromium

If you need to pass custom arguments to Chromium, use the addChromiumArguments method.

The method accepts an array of key/value pairs, or simply values. All of these arguments will automatically be prefixed with --.

If no key is provided, then the argument is passed through as-is.

This method can be useful in order to pass a flag to fix font rendering issues on some Linux distributions (e.g. CentOS).

Installation

This package can be installed through Composer.

Usage

In all examples it is assumed that you imported this namespace at the top of your file

Screenshots

Here's the easiest way to create an image of a webpage:

Formatting the image

By default the screenshot's type will be a png. (According to Puppeteer's Config)
But you can change it to jpeg with quality option.

Sizing the image

By default the screenshot's size will match the resolution you use for your desktop. Want another size of screenshot? No problem!

You can also set the size of the output image independently of the size of window. Here's how to resize a screenshot take with a resolution of 1920x1080 and scale that down to something that fits inside 200x200.

You can screenshot only a portion of the page by using clip.

You can take a screenshot of an element matching a selector using select.

Manipulating the image

You can use all the methods spatie/image provides. Here's an example where we create a greyscale image:

Taking a full page screenshot

You can take a screenshot of the full length of the page by using fullPage().

Setting the device scale

You can also capture the webpage at higher pixel densities by passing a device scale factor value of 2 or 3. This mimics how the webpage would be displayed on a retina/xhdpi display.

Mobile emulation

You can emulate a mobile view with the mobile and touch methods. mobile will set the display to take into account the page's meta viewport, as Chrome mobile would. touch will set the browser to emulate touch functionality, hence allowing spoofing for pages that check for touch. Along with the userAgent method, these can be used to effectively take a mobile screenshot of the page.

Device emulation

You can emulate a device view with the device method. The devices' names can be found Here.

is the same as

Backgrounds

If you want to ignore the website's background when capturing a screenshot, use the hideBackground() method.

Dismiss dialogs

Javascript pop ups such as alerts, prompts and confirmations cause rendering of the site to stop, which leads to an empty screenshot. Calling dismissDialogs() method automatically closes such popups allowing the screenshot to be taken.

Disable Javascript

If you want to completely disable javascript when capturing the page, use the disableJavascript() method.
Be aware that some sites will not render correctly without javascript.

Waiting for lazy-loaded resources

Some websites lazy-load additional resources via ajax or use webfonts, which might not be loaded in time for the screenshot. Using the waitUntilNetworkIdle() method you can tell Browsershot to wait for a period of 500 ms with no network activity before taking the screenshot, ensuring all additional resources are loaded.

Alternatively you can use less strict waitUntilNetworkIdle(false), which allows 2 network connections in the 500 ms waiting period, useful for websites with scripts periodically pinging an ajax endpoint.

Delayed screenshots

You can delay the taking of screenshot by setDelay(). This is useful if you need to wait for completion of javascript or if you are attempting to capture lazy-loaded resources.

Waiting for javascript function

You can also wait for a javascript function until is returns true by using waitForFunction(). This is useful if you need to wait for task on javascript which is not related to network status.

Adding JS

You can add javascript prior to your screenshot or output using the syntax for Puppeteer's addScriptTag.

Adding CSS

You can add CSS styles prior to your screenshot or output using the syntax for Puppeteer's addStyleTag.

Output directly to the browser

You can output the image directly to the browser using the screenshot() method.

PDFs

Browsershot will save a pdf if the path passed to the save method has a pdf extension.

Alternatively you can explicitly use the savePdf method:

You can also pass some html which will be converted to a pdf.

Sizing the pdf

You can specify the width and the height.

Optionally you can give a custom unit to the paperSize as the third parameter.

Setting margins

Margins can be set.

Optionally you can give a custom unit to the margins as the fifth parameter.

Headers and footers

By default a PDF will not show the header and a footer generated by Chrome. Here's how you can make the header and footer appear. You can also provide a custom HTML template for the header and footer.

In the header and footer HTML, any tags with the following classes will have its printing value injected into its contents.

• date formatted print date
• title document title
• url document location
• pageNumber current page number
• totalPages total pages in the document

To hide the header or footer, you can call either hideHeader or hideFooter.

Backgrounds

By default, the resulting PDF will not show the background of the html page. If you do want the background to be included you can call showBackground:

Landscape orientation

Call landscape if you want to resulting pdf to be landscape oriented.

Only export specific pages

You can control which pages should be export by passing a print range to the pages method. Here are some examples of valid print ranges: 1, 1-3, 1-5, 8, 11-13.

Output directly to the browser

You can output the PDF directly to the browser using the pdf() method.

HTML

Browsershot also can get the body of an html page after JavaScript has been executed:

Evaluate

Browsershot can get the evaluation of an html page:

Misc

Setting an arbitrary option

You can set any arbitrary options by calling setOption:

Fixing cors issues

If you experience issues related to cors, you can opt to disable cors checks with --disable-web-security.

Changing the language of the browser

You can use setOption to change the language of the browser.
In order to load a page in a specific language for example.

Setting the user agent

If you want to set the user agent Google Chrome should use when taking the screenshot you can do so:

Setting the CSS media type of the page

You can emulate the media type, especially usefull when you're generating pdf shots, because it will try to emulate the print version of the page by default.

The default timeout of Browsershot is set to 60 seconds. Of course, you can modify this timeout:

Disable sandboxing

When running Linux in certain virtualization enviroments it might need to disable sandboxing.

Ignore HTTPS errors

You can ignore HTTPS errors, if necessary.

Specify a proxy Server

You can specify a proxy server to use when connecting. The argument passed to setProxyServer will be passed to the --proxy-server= option of Chromium. More info here: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/network-settings#TOC-Command-line-options-for-proxy-settings

Setting extraHTTPHeaders

To send custom HTTP headers, set the extraHTTPHeaders option like so:

Using HTTP Authentication

You can provide credentials for HTTP authentication:

Using Cookies

You can add cookies to the request to the given url:

You can specify the domain to register cookies to, if necessary:

Clicking on the page

You can specify clicks on the page.

Typing on the page

You can type on the page (you can use this to fill form fields).

You can combine type and click to create a screenshot of a page after submitting a form:

Changing the value of a dropdown value

You can change the value of a dropdown on the page (you can use this to change form select fields).

You can combine selectOption, type and click to create a screenshot of a page after submitting a form:

Writing options to file

When the amount of options given to puppeteer becomes too big, Browsershot will fail because of an overflow of characters in the command line. Browsershot can write the options to a file and pass that file to puppeteer and so bypass the character overflow.

Related packages

• Laravel wrapper: laravel-browsershot

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING for details.

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.

Alternatives

If you're not able to install Node and Puppeteer, take a look at v2 of browsershot, which uses Chrome headless CLI to take a screenshot. v2 is not maintained anymore, but should work pretty well.

If using headless Chrome does not work for you take a lookat at v1 of this package which uses the abandoned PhantomJS binary.

Postcardware

You're free to use this package (it's MIT-licensed), but if it makes it to your production environment we highly appreciate you sending us a postcard from your hometown, mentioning which of our package(s) you are using.

Our address is: Spatie, Samberstraat 69D, 2060 Antwerp, Belgium.

All postcards are published on our website.

Credits

• Freek Van der Herten
• All Contributors

Support us

Spatie is a webdesign agency based in Antwerp, Belgium. You'll find an overview of all our open source projects on our website.

Does your business depend on our contributions? Reach out and support us on Patreon. All pledges will be dedicated to allocating workforce on maintenance and new awesome stuff.

License

The MIT License (MIT). Please see License File for more information.