[CentOS] script to make webpage snapshot

Thu Aug 11 22:19:15 UTC 2016
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>


On Thu, August 11, 2016 5:13 pm, Dave Stevens wrote:
> Quoting Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>:
>
>>
>> On Thu, August 11, 2016 5:02 pm, John R Pierce wrote:
>>> On 8/11/2016 1:46 PM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>>> Could someone recommend a script or utility one can run from command
line
>>>> on Linux or UNIX machine to make a snapshot of webpage?
>>>>
>>>> We have a signage (xibo) and whoever creates/changes content, likes
to add
>>>> URLs of some webpages there. All works well if these are webpages on our
>>>> servers (which are pretty fast), but some external servers often take
time
>>>> to respond and take time to assemble the page, in addition these servers
>>>> sometimes get really busy, and when response is longer than time devoted
>>>> for that content in signage window, this window hangs forever with blank
>>>> white field until you restart client. Trivial workaround: just to get
snapshot (as, say daily cron job), and point signage client to that
snapshot definitely will solve it, and simultaneously we will stop
bugging
>>>> other people servers often without much need for it.
>>>>
>>>> But when I tried to search for some utility or script that makes webpage
>>>> snapshot, I discovered that my ability to search degraded somehow...
>>>
>>> many/most webpages these days are heavily dynamic content, a static
snapshot would likely break.  plus any site-relative links on that
snapshot would be pointing to your server, not the original, any ajax
code on that webpage would try to interact with your server which
won't be running the right back end stuff, etcetc.
>>
>> I usually am not good at explaining what I need. I really only need an
image of what one would see in web browser if one point to that URL. I
do
>> not care it to be interactive. I also don't want to get the content
("mirror") of stuff that URL points to on variety of "depths" - I don't
want to use wget or curl for this reason. That is what I tried first
and it breaks with at lest one of the web sites - they do seem protect
themselves from "robots" or similar. And we don't need it. We just need
to
>> show what they page shows today, that's all.
>>
>> Valeri
>
> why not File -> Print -> .pdf?

This involves a person sitting with open web browser and clicking mouse. I
need to do it for a few webpages once a day, as they change daily. I
prefer to once spend time on making cron job, and forget about it forever.
Hence I need it done from command line.

Valeri

>
> D
>
>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz
>>>
>>
>>
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> Valeri Galtsev
>> Sr System Administrator
>> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
>> Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
>> University of Chicago
>> Phone: 773-702-4247
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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>
>
>
> --
> "As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the
attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
>
> -- John Dewey
>
>
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>
>


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++