Please ensure the the Ichabod executable is available somewhere in the PATH. Run ichabod on a known port, with verbosity turned on in order to watch the activity:

ichabod --port=7777 --verbosity=1

Note: below we are using python requests to make requests to ichabod. There are also useful [python bindings] (/ichabod/documentation/doc/2015/06/11/python-bindings.html) available.

Hello, World!

Ichabod accepts POSTed JSON on the listening port. The JSON should contain at a minum the html or url field, as well as the width, height, format, output and js fields.

  • html - Raw HTML code to be rasterized
  • url - URL from which HTML will be fetched and rasterized
  • width - Width of the virtual browser screen
  • height - Height of the virtual browser screen
  • format - Output rasterization format (e.g., png or gif)
  • output - Path to local filename where output is written
  • js - javascript to execute once the HTML is loaded

Example:

python -c \
"import requests;\
 r = requests.get('http://localhost:7777',\
       data={'html':'<html><head></head><body>helloworld</body></html>',\
             'width':100,\
             'height':100,\
             'output':'/tmp/helloworld.png',\
             'js':'(function(){ichabod.snapshotPage();ichabod.saveToOutput();})();'});\
 print r.text"

After running the above, ichabod will output the rasterized image, and also report the amount of time spent processing. A result is returned, also in JSON format, suitable for consumption by a client. For example:

{
   "conversion" : true,
   "convert_elapsed" : 2.303,
   "errors" : null,
   "path" : "/tmp/helloworld.png",
   "result" : null,
   "run_elapsed" : 14.536,
   "warnings" : null
}

Elapsed processing times are reported for the overall time (run_elapsed) as well as the time spent actually rasterizing (convert_elapsed).

Each element of the POSTed request serves a purpose. Most are self-explanatory, however the js field deserves some comment. After loading the HTML, ichabod executes whatever javascript code is supplied in the js field. Security should be kept in mind when running ichabod on unprotected networks. If no js is specified, or the javascript performs no useful actions, then ichabod does nothing (the HTML will still be rendered in memory). In order to output rasterized files, use the ichabod object which is injected into the javascript runtime environment. There are several ways in which the page, or portions of the page, can be snapshotted before being saved to disk. See the API details for further information.

If there are any errors during processing, they will be reported to the client. Here we neglect to provide the width and height of the virtual screen. Note that errors contains text of the problem and conversion is set to false since no rasterized output was produced.

python -c \
"import requests;\
 r = requests.get('http://localhost:7777',\
       data={'html':'<html><head></head><body>helloworld</body></html>',\
             'output':'/tmp/helloworld.png',\
             'js':'(function(){ichabod.snapshotPage();ichabod.saveToOutput();})();'});\
 print r.text"

Result:

{
   "conversion" : false,
   "elapsed" : null,
   "errors" : [ "Bad dimensions" ],
   "output" : null,
   "path" : null,
   "result" : null,
   "warnings" : null
}

Return Value

In addition to rasterizing HTML, ichabod can also perform other work and return values to the calling client. The return value must be able to be encoded as a JSON string, which will be sent down the wire to the client in the result field. For example:

python -c \
"import requests;\
 r = requests.get('http://localhost:7777',\
       data={'html':'<html><head></head><body>helloworld</body></html>',\
             'width':100,\
             'height':100,\
             'output':'/tmp/helloworld.png',\
             'js':'(function(){ichabod.snapshotPage();ichabod.saveToOutput();return JSON.stringify({"answer":1+1})})();'});\
 print r.text"

Result:

 {
    "conversion" : true,
    "convert_elapsed" : 1.931,
    "errors" : null,
    "path" : "/tmp/helloworld.png",
    "result" : {
      "answer" : 2
     },
     "run_elapsed" : 3.151,
     "warnings" : null
 }