DZone Snippets: screenshots code

Ruby library for Web site thumbnailer service

peter (Peter Cooperx) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 12:41:33 GMT

Today I found a really cool and flexible Web page thumbnailing service at http://bluga.net/webthumb/ with a nice API.. so I wrote a Ruby library for it. It works well. The service lets you do 250 free requests per month, but over that the price seems very reasonable (compared with the dire alternatives I found).

require 'net/http'

require 'rubygems'

require 'xmlsimple'



class Nailer



  @@api_baseurl = 'http://webthumb.bluga.net/api.php'

  @@api_key = 'PUT YOUR API KEY HERE'

  

  attr_accessor :collection_time, :job_id, :ok



  def initialize(url, width = 1024, height = 768)

    api_request = %Q{#{@@api_key}#{url}#{width}#{height}}



    result = do_request(api_request)



    if result.class == Net::HTTPOK

      result_data = XmlSimple.xml_in(result.body)

      @job_id = result_data['jobs'].first['job'].first['content']

      @collection_time = Time.now.to_i + result_data['jobs'].first['job'].first['estimate'].to_i

      @ok = true

    else

      @ok = false

    end

  end



  def retrieve(size = :small)

    api_request = %Q{#{@@api_key}#{@job_id}#{size.to_s}}

    result = do_request(api_request)

    result.body

  end



  def retrieve_to_file(filename, size = :small)

    File.new(filename, 'w+').write(retrieve(size.to_s))

  end



  def ready?

    return unless Time.now.to_i >= @collection_time



    api_request = %Q{#{@@api_key}#{@job_id}}

    result = do_request(api_request)



    if result.class == Net::HTTPOK

      @ok = true

      result_data = XmlSimple.xml_in(result.body)

      begin

        @result_url = result_data['jobStatus'].first['status'].first['pickup']

        @completion_time = result_data['jobStatus'].first['status'].first['completionTime']

      rescue

        @collection_time += 60 

	      return false

      end

    else

      @ok = false

    end



    true

  end



  def ok?

    @ok == true

  end



  def wait_until_ready

    sleep 1 until ready?

  end



  private



  def do_request(body)

    api_url = URI.parse(@@api_baseurl)

    request = Net::HTTP::Post.new(api_url.path)

    request.body = body

    Net::HTTP.new(api_url.host, api_url.port).start {|h| h.request(request) }

  end

end

  





url = 'http://www.rubyinside.com/'

t = Nailer.new(url)



if t.ok?

  t.wait_until_ready

  t.retrieve_to_file('out1.jpg', :small)

  t.retrieve_to_file('out2.jpg', :medium)

  t.retrieve_to_file('out3.jpg', :medium2)

  t.retrieve_to_file('out4.jpg', :large)

  puts "Thumbnails saved"

else

  puts "Error"

end

Ruby Client for Amazon Alexa Site Thumbnail (AST) Service

peter (Peter Cooperx) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:31:27 GMT

It's scrappy, but it does the job.



require 'cgi'

require 'openssl'

require 'base64'

require 'open-uri'



access_id = 'YOUR_ACCESS_ID'

secret_id = 'YOUR_SECRET_ID'



source_url = ARGV.first



timestamp = Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")

sig = Base64.encode64(OpenSSL::HMAC::digest(OpenSSL::Digest::Digest.new('SHA1'), secret_id, 'Thumbnail' + timestamp)).strip



url = "http://ast.amazonaws.com/Xino?Action=Thumbnail&AWSAccessKeyId=" + access_id

url << "&Signature=" + CGI.escape(sig)

url << "&Timestamp=" + CGI.escape(timestamp)

url << "&Url=" +  source_url



begin

  doc = open(url).read

rescue

  puts "Could not access AWS"

  exit

end



m = doc.match(/\]+exists=\"true\"\>(.+?)\<\//i)



if m && m[1]

  thumb_url = m[1]

  thumb_url.gsub!(/\&/, '&')

  File.open("#{source_url}.jpg", "w") { |f| f.write open(thumb_url).read }

  puts "Saved to #{source_url}.jpg"

elsif m && m.match(/exists=\"false\"/)

  puts "No thumbnail for #{source_url}"

else

  puts "Error"

end

Change OS X's default screenshot image format

peter (Peter Cooperx) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 23:59:18 GMT

At the prompt, type this:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type image_format

Replace "image_format" with a file format name, like pdf, png, tiff, etc. Then to take screenshots, Cmd+Shift+4, then drag around the area you want to capture.