This page describes how to use our cloud-based API to convert web pages and HTML to images in Ruby. The API is user-friendly and can be integrated into your application with just a few lines of code. For general information about the converter, please visit our HTML to Image API page.
The Ruby API client library provides easy access to the Pdfcrowd API. No third-party libraries are required.
Install the client library from rubygems.orggem install pdfcrowd
We also offer other installation options.
The credentials to access the API are your Pdfcrowd username and the API key. You can try out the API without registering using the following demo credentials:
demo
ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d
To get your personal API credentials, you can start a free API trial or buy the API license.
You can enter a web page or upload an HTML file to get an image output preview in our API playground. The playground allows you to interactively play with the API settings and autogenerates corresponding Ruby code that you can copy and paste to your application.
Or you can choose from the examples below and adapt the code to your needs.
Refer to the HTML to Image Ruby Reference for a description of all API methods.
Here are a few Ruby examples to get you started quickly with the API. See more examples.
require "pdfcrowd" begin # create the API client instance client = Pdfcrowd::HtmlToImageClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d") # configure the conversion client.setOutputFormat("png") # run the conversion and write the result to a file client.convertUrlToFile("http://www.example.com", "example.png") rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why # report the error STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}" # rethrow or handle the exception raise end
require "pdfcrowd" begin # create the API client instance client = Pdfcrowd::HtmlToImageClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d") # configure the conversion client.setOutputFormat("png") # run the conversion and write the result to a file client.convertFileToFile("/path/to/MyLayout.html", "MyLayout.png") rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why # report the error STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}" # rethrow or handle the exception raise end
require "pdfcrowd" begin # create the API client instance client = Pdfcrowd::HtmlToImageClient.new("demo", "ce544b6ea52a5621fb9d55f8b542d14d") # configure the conversion client.setOutputFormat("png") # run the conversion and write the result to a file client.convertStringToFile("<html><body><h1>Hello World!</h1></body></html>", "HelloWorld.png") rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why # report the error STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}" # rethrow or handle the exception raise end
The API can be easily integrated into your environment. You can have our interactive API Playground autogenerate the integration code for you:
The API lets you convert a web page, a local HTML file, or a string containing HTML. The result of the conversion can be stored to a local file, to a stream object or to a variable. See the conversion input section for more details.
The best way to start with the API is to choose one of the examples and once you get it working, you can further customize the code. You can find the most common customizations in the table below.
Image size | Set image dimensions with setScreenshotWidth and setScreenshotHeight. |
Image format | Specify a different output image format with setOutputFormat. |
Hide or remove elements |
You can use the following classes in your HTML
code to hide or remove elements from the output:
|
Use @media print | You can switch to the print version of the page (if it exists) with setUsePrintMedia. |
Run custom JavaScript | You can use setOnLoadJavascript or setCustomJavascript to alter the HTML contents with a custom JavaScript. In addition to the standard browser APIs, the custom JavaScript code can use helper functions from our JavaScript library . |
Custom CSS styling |
You can alter CSS styling used during conversion
with a custom JavaScript or using the
pdfcrowd-body
CSS class, which is automatically set on the HTML
<body> element. You can, for example, set
the H1 height to 48px by adding the following line
to your CSS:
.pdfcrowd-body h1 { font-size: 48px; }
|
The API enables rendering of HTML templates. The template syntax is based on the Jinja template rendering engine.
The most common constructs are:
Invoice: {{ invoice.number }}
{% for invoice in invoices %} ... {% endfor %}
{% if invoice.total > 100 %} ... {% endif %}
{{ invoice.to.first_name|capitalize }}
The supported input data formats are JSON, XML, CSV and YAML. The data can be uploaded from a file or from a string variable.
Supported template filters: capitalize, center, default, escape, first, forceescape, format, indent, join, last, length, list, lower, replace, reverse, safe, slice, sort, string, striptags, title, trim, truncate, unique, upper, wordcount, wordwrap.
See template rendering examples.
It is recommended that you implement error handling to catch errors that the API may return, see the example code below. A list of status codes and their description can be found here.
begin # call the API rescue Pdfcrowd::Error => why # print error STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error: #{why}" # print just error code STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error Code: #{why.getCode()}" # print just error message STDERR.puts "Pdfcrowd Error Message: #{why.getMessage()}" # or handle the error in your way end
libPdfcrowd.highlightHtmlElements
method call to visualize all HTML elements. See the
backgrounds example
,
borders example
and helper
JavaScript library
documentation.