Need Help ASAP!

[Chad A. Beckner]

Hey all,

I've spent all day trying to figure this out. What I need is a script to
grab a webpage and display it as an (thumbnail?) image on one of my pages.
GotDotNet has a webservice to do this, but I need everything to be "local",
i.e. I can't call their webservice. Does anyone know where I can find the
code to do this (I think I've seen it out there before, just can't find it
again). Any help would be tremendously appreciated!!!

Thanks to everyone,

Chad

[John Saunders]

"Chad A. Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:%2******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP12.phx.gbl. ..

I disagree, it IS an ASP .NET question... I want to create an image of a
remote webpage, and display it in my aspx file (not include an image "from" their page). I know this is possible, I've seen it out there, but there's
not very good documentation on how to do it. See this site for an example
of what I am trying to do:

Chad, if you ask the creators of the ActiveX control whose URL another
poster has supplied, I bet they'll tell you that their control either hosts
IE inside of it or else parses the HTML itself. Those are the only ways to
do it - somebody has to render the HTML into pixels.

It's also totally separate from ASP.NET, as the translation will be
happening entirely on the "client" side. If you happen to host the "client
side" on your server, that's up to you, but it's still a web client which
can render HTML (i.e., a browser).
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[Chad Beckner]

Hey John, hehe, we keep running into eachother! :-)

So, are you saying that there is no "server side" code to translate HTML
to an image file? I've seen many examples on the internet of how to do this
(see previous posts for an example), but I guess what I need now is to
figure out how I can translate the HTML to an image. I've got it connecting
and getting the page data, but have no idea of how to do it using .NET
(again, it may not be ASP .NET specific, but where to post from here??). As
always, thanks for your time and help! :-)

Chad
"John Saunders" <jo************ **@notcoldmail. com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP12.phx.gbl...

"Chad A. Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:%2******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP12.phx.gbl. ..

I disagree, it IS an ASP .NET question... I want to create an image of a remote webpage, and display it in my aspx file (not include an image "from"

their page). I know this is possible, I've seen it out there, but there's not very good documentation on how to do it. See this site for an example of what I am trying to do:

Chad, if you ask the creators of the ActiveX control whose URL another
poster has supplied, I bet they'll tell you that their control either

hosts IE inside of it or else parses the HTML itself. Those are the only ways to
do it - somebody has to render the HTML into pixels.

It's also totally separate from ASP.NET, as the translation will be
happening entirely on the "client" side. If you happen to host the "client
side" on your server, that's up to you, but it's still a web client which
can render HTML (i.e., a browser).
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[John Saunders]

"Chad Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:uJ******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP12.phx.gbl...

Hey John, hehe, we keep running into eachother! :-)

So, are you saying that there is no "server side" code to translate HTML
to an image file? I've seen many examples on the internet of how to do this (see previous posts for an example), but I guess what I need now is to
figure out how I can translate the HTML to an image. I've got it connecting and getting the page data, but have no idea of how to do it using .NET
(again, it may not be ASP .NET specific, but where to post from here??). As always, thanks for your time and help! :-)

No, there is no server-side code for rendering HTML into an image. However,
since your server is also running Windows, you might be able to use a
client-side technique to do it. I know that it's possible to feed HTML to
the IE COM object (I seem to remember you have to do a navigate, then load
the HTML, something like that). There may then be some mechanism to get the
thing to render to a device context of your choice, perhaps one backed in
memory which you could subsequently read to get the image.

Frankly, if I were you, I'd either pay someone else to do this or reevaluate
the requirements. For instance, do you have to be able to get a thumbnail of
any random web page, or is it only some pages? Do you perhaps have control
over those pages? If so, then perhaps there's a way to get those pages to
generate both HTML and an image? Maybe those pages use only a subset of
HTML? Perhaps a subset which isn't that difficult to parse and render?

Good luck with this.
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[John Saunders]

"Chad A. Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:%2******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP12.phx.gbl. ..

I disagree, it IS an ASP .NET question... I want to create an image of a
remote webpage, and display it in my aspx file (not include an image "from" their page). I know this is possible, I've seen it out there, but there's
not very good documentation on how to do it. See this site for an example
of what I am trying to do:

Chad, if you ask the creators of the ActiveX control whose URL another
poster has supplied, I bet they'll tell you that their control either hosts
IE inside of it or else parses the HTML itself. Those are the only ways to
do it - somebody has to render the HTML into pixels.

It's also totally separate from ASP.NET, as the translation will be
happening entirely on the "client" side. If you happen to host the "client
side" on your server, that's up to you, but it's still a web client which
can render HTML (i.e., a browser).
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[Chad Beckner]

Hey John, hehe, we keep running into eachother! :-)

So, are you saying that there is no "server side" code to translate HTML
to an image file? I've seen many examples on the internet of how to do this
(see previous posts for an example), but I guess what I need now is to
figure out how I can translate the HTML to an image. I've got it connecting
and getting the page data, but have no idea of how to do it using .NET
(again, it may not be ASP .NET specific, but where to post from here??). As
always, thanks for your time and help! :-)

Chad
"John Saunders" <jo************ **@notcoldmail. com> wrote in message
news:eo******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP12.phx.gbl...

"Chad A. Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:%2******** ********@TK2MSF TNGP12.phx.gbl. ..

I disagree, it IS an ASP .NET question... I want to create an image of a remote webpage, and display it in my aspx file (not include an image "from"

their page). I know this is possible, I've seen it out there, but there's not very good documentation on how to do it. See this site for an example of what I am trying to do:

Chad, if you ask the creators of the ActiveX control whose URL another
poster has supplied, I bet they'll tell you that their control either

hosts IE inside of it or else parses the HTML itself. Those are the only ways to
do it - somebody has to render the HTML into pixels.

It's also totally separate from ASP.NET, as the translation will be
happening entirely on the "client" side. If you happen to host the "client
side" on your server, that's up to you, but it's still a web client which
can render HTML (i.e., a browser).
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[John Saunders]

"Chad Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:uJ******** ******@TK2MSFTN GP12.phx.gbl...

Hey John, hehe, we keep running into eachother! :-)

So, are you saying that there is no "server side" code to translate HTML
to an image file? I've seen many examples on the internet of how to do this (see previous posts for an example), but I guess what I need now is to
figure out how I can translate the HTML to an image. I've got it connecting and getting the page data, but have no idea of how to do it using .NET
(again, it may not be ASP .NET specific, but where to post from here??). As always, thanks for your time and help! :-)

No, there is no server-side code for rendering HTML into an image. However,
since your server is also running Windows, you might be able to use a
client-side technique to do it. I know that it's possible to feed HTML to
the IE COM object (I seem to remember you have to do a navigate, then load
the HTML, something like that). There may then be some mechanism to get the
thing to render to a device context of your choice, perhaps one backed in
memory which you could subsequently read to get the image.

Frankly, if I were you, I'd either pay someone else to do this or reevaluate
the requirements. For instance, do you have to be able to get a thumbnail of
any random web page, or is it only some pages? Do you perhaps have control
over those pages? If so, then perhaps there's a way to get those pages to
generate both HTML and an image? Maybe those pages use only a subset of
HTML? Perhaps a subset which isn't that difficult to parse and render?

Good luck with this.
--
John Saunders
johnwsaundersii i at hotmail

[Bob]

Chad

Take a look at webgoo.com. They have a component that does what you want.

J

"Chad A. Beckner" <Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote in message
news:e5******** ******@tk2msftn gp13.phx.gbl...

Hey all,

I've spent all day trying to figure this out. What I need is a script to grab a webpage and display it as an (thumbnail?) image on one of my pages.
GotDotNet has a webservice to do this, but I need everything to be "local", i.e. I can't call their webservice. Does anyone know where I can find the
code to do this (I think I've seen it out there before, just can't find it
again). Any help would be tremendously appreciated!!!

Thanks to everyone,

Chad

[Roger Helliwell]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 14:26:26 -0500 in
microsoft.publi c.dotnet.framew ork.aspnet, "Chad A. Beckner"
<Ch*********@Pr ospectiveLink.c om> wrote:

Hey all,

I've spent all day trying to figure this out. What I need is a script to
grab a webpage and display it as an (thumbnail?) image on one of my pages.
GotDotNet has a webservice to do this, but I need everything to be "local",
i.e. I can't call their webservice. Does anyone know where I can find the
code to do this (I think I've seen it out there before, just can't find it
again). Any help would be tremendously appreciated!!!

I'm guessing that such a screen scrape wouldn't be done on the fly for
efficiency reasons. Rather, you could develop a seperate MFC app that
visited a URL, rendered the contents using the WebBrowser control then
saved the viewport as a jpeg. Your web-app could then just link to the
resulting jpegs.

Roger