How can I automatically take a screenshot of a website at a specified time?

Question

I need to take a screenshot of a website automatically at a time specified by me. Ideally it would not be using my computer since it's not guaranteed to be on at the specified time.

Is there some kind of web service that does this? Or some (free) hosting site where I could set up a script to do it (PHP comes to mind)? I do have a jailbreaked iPhone that could be used as well (jailbreaked = I have root access and could maybe do some cron magic).

Solution 1

You can start a session at http://browsershots.org . If you know how to do with cronjob it can be started at anytime I think.

Solution 2

You could look at this blog entry describing how to make a screenshot

As you see there is a php script which grabs the screenshot:

<?php

// save this snippet as url_to_png.php
// usage: php url_to_png.php http://example.com
if (!isset($argv[1])){
    die("specify site: e.g. http://example.com\n");
}

$md5 = md5($argv[1]);
$command = "wkhtmltopdf $argv[1] $md5.pdf";
exec($command, $output, $ret);
if ($ret) {
    echo "error fetching screen dump\n";
    die;
}

$command = "convert $md5.pdf -append $md5.png";
exec($command, $output, $ret);
if ($ret){
    echo "Error converting\n";
    die;
}

echo "Conversion compleated: $argv[1] converted to $md5.png\n"; 

However you'll need imagemagick and wkhtmltopdf:

sudo aptitude install imagemagick wkhtmltopdf

It should not take much imagination to setup a cron job which uses this script and then saves it to a folder.

Solution 3

You can use webcapture. A simple script using webkit and Qt.

http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-pages/

Solution 4

A few months ago i had to do something similar and I found three small programs.

In Windows you can use an open source tool called IEcapt

Usage from the command line:

iecapt --url=http://www.google.com/ --out=localfile.png

In Linux you can use html2jpg or Webthumb.

I used IEcapt and worked fine for me.

Solution 5

You can use Wimg.ca, here is an example.

View more solutions

Comments

[BinaryMisfit]

PLease can someone elaborate why this belongs on SO. The OP is looking for a solution which may involve PHP but might not?

[kenorb]

Check these links: labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/01/15/capturing-web-pages, browsershots.org, wiki.imacros.net/Browser_Automation#Web_Site_Screenshot, wiki.imacros.net/iMacros_for_Firefox#Command_Line_Support