I have a HTML page that uses javascript to generate dynamic images using a graph handler on a different server. The images will contain the same data for 1 week but will change when the 1 week window expires.
I am trying to come up with a way to automatically save the contents of the page to either a local file on the server or write to a PDF file.
I tried to use a 'web downloader' like HTTTrack, but it does not get the dynamic images...
I am running the html page off IIS.
I have no experience with IIS or ASP.
Thanks!
I'm not sure that I see any way to do this directly off the front end in an automatic manner. The challenge is that any "screen scraper" you have go out and grab the site with would need to be running javascript to get the tables, which isn't how I see many such systems operating. It's partially why you see strangeness on Archive.org when you have a site that's heavily augmented with javascript or flash.
An untested concept you might attempt was posted in this Stack Question
I could see some sort of a system that you rig together with another computer that schedules an browser load then prints to .pdf in some fashion. I've been unable to find any specific software that would automate that process, so you'd be left cobbling such a system together on your own.
Clearly you have the data available to make your dynamic images. The most feature-rich way I could think of would be to use a system like Jasper Reports or Crystal Reports, which you could feed your data, replicate the report, and easily output via pdf, a built-in export in both systems.
Perhaps its worth questioning your end purpose. To me, creating a "snapshot" of the relevant data in another table and using another system to render your graphs from that snapshot data seems far more valuable than just a print of the screen. You can then go back and adjust data as needed, or use it for other reporting purposes, exporting in any number of tools that are even as simple as Access. Heck, 10 years down the road you may want the data to look better than the graph system you're currently using, and you'd have the data to render it any way you want. When the VP of marketing comes looking for his numbers, a simple click would output those numbers that could be manipulated as needed from there.
I was able to accomplish what I wanted to do using wkhtmltopdf to convert my HTML page with Javascript to PDF. I ran the job via a task scheduler to supply my website url and output file name as parameters.
I then used a windows batch file to check if the file was created and then rename/email it to interested parties.
This of course requires that you have the ability to install wkhtmltopdf on your server.
Related
Is it possible to add a load of programs to a website that can be opened within the webpage itself. for example say the animation software blender. Would it be possible to add all the blender files to the website files and execute them within the webpage creating the GUI inside a window sized set of parameters
Updates Based on Inputs: Amazon recently released a Product/Service named Appstream 2.0 which does exactly what you had asked for, It is a proprietary platform though and has its own learning curve to even set it up. It does work well with solidworks, so it should work with most of other applications too.(Solidworks are providing the demo of their software via this service as of now(Nov18)). Also it uses a specific technique which doesn't require a live video stream and instead streams just the changes in images sprites which in itself is pretty interesting.
Another alternative is cameyo which is also a paid service.
As of opensource alternatives, I don't yet know of such a software.
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The closest you will ever get to this thing is flash and that too is NOT an exe.
About having a GUI for a software is a different thing, depends upon whether that specific software is exposing an API and maybe a service/Port that its listening to. And maybe making a script based client side GET request to that specific service on localhost, maybe.
Anyways, Wanting to run an executable on the client side is totally defeating the purpose of a website. Generally it is the other way round like say, you want to provide a service via website to compress a picture. You can pipe the submitted data to that respective software and then return the result as a response.
Why would you do such thing??: because in some particular cases I need to hide the source values of a graph generated by dygraph. Since in the case of "not hidden values" I am using dygraphs js libray, using this particular feature would save me a lot of time.
This way I would have the same look and feel, and I would not have to modify the data generation process.
I would like to know if this road is feasible or utter madness:
Steps: (using Yii-PHP over an Apache server)
Generate javascript page on the server side.
Get image as png (somehow), still on the server side.
Send the image to the client as the only thing he can receive.
There's a ton of graphing libraries for PHP, why not use one of those? (e.g. JpGraph, pChart...) Pretty much every one of them can produce an image in PNG.
Feasible steps:
Invoke a PHP graphing library on server side
Render it as PNG and send to the client
If you insist on using a JavaScript library, then I guess PhantomJS is your only option, but it is not exactly optimal.
tl;dr: My vote goes to "utter madness".
Some dygraphs users have built a tool for exporting PNGs: demo and discussion.
The current task is as follows:
It's about publishing spreadsheet tables online and making them accessible only to registered subscribers. The access to these spreadsheets is meant to be a paid service. Subscribers may access them online from wherever they are and do their calculations related to expenses or working hours and so on. These spreadsheets are developed in MS Excel. They are then converted into HTML/Javascript files via a macro app. The resulting Javascript code contains all the important formulas which need to be protected.
I know about Javascript "obfuscation" and scrambling" but would like to find a better solution since the two mentioned methods can be reversed.
The idea is to place the spreadsheet tables and the formulas for calculation inside of a Flash container file for protection. This Flash container file is not meant to link to or access any other external sources. The data which the users input into the spreadsheet would be saved in XML format.
Here is one tutorial which explains how to encrypt a Flash container file in order to prevent decompilers from making the content accessible:
http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/protect-your-flash-files-from-decompilers-by-using-encryption--active-3115
Here is a tool which claims to do the same, but it may be that it just obfuscates and does not go as far as the process in the tutorial above:
www.amayeta.com/software/swfencrypt/
There are some downsides of using Flash which I know. I will not list them here, they are discussed in this forum. Consider that in this case the security aspect outweighs the downsides of Flash. The conversion of the HTML/Javascript content into Flash format will add more effort to this project.
I would like to ask these questions to this community:
Is there a converter that could help to translate Javascript into Actionscript?
Would it be necessary to translate the Javascript into PHP in order to use it within Flash?
Would the effort be worth it?
No this won't be worth the effort as the client will have full control over the runtime of flash. This means that it would not be difficult to extract the functions used. If you must protect your formulas then you should only perform the calculations on your server (or any kind of well protected cloud, if such a thing exists).
If you think that your code will run fine in flash or a browser, then it should not be hard to run the code in a well protected backend server.
I want to add Excel button below the html table, that gives an Excel sheet of the table. I am using C# behind it, but I want it do on client side just using jQuery or Javascript without using PHP or .NET... Not more.
I am searching for hours however I don't find any fix solution. There it said you can use activeX object and CSV however I don't see any running examples.
ActiveX will only run on Internet Explorer so your solution will be limited to that platform.
Without ActiveX or server side scripts there is no way to achieve this due to JavaScript security designs it is not allowed to create files or push in memory files to download streams.
I would not recommend ActiveX or anything that tries to run code outside of the browser on the client system. ActiveX only works on IE not to mention the inherent security risks that brings about.
A possible method would be to use a server side script along with jquery to generate the file and return it without ever leaving the page your on. It looks good and you don't really have to jump through hoops to make it work nor will the user. (if you want an example of the jquery required to do this let me know).
For c# there is alot of tutorials on generating excel files from your data for example here.
The only reason I can think of that you would want to create the file locally is use of resources on your server. C# will be extremly efficient in generating that file not to mention there are a couple things you can do (dependant on the data) to negate any impact it has:
If the data changes are few and far between consider storing the
generated file and directing to that the next time until the data has
been changed.
Limit the data set it returns by way of a search criteria
There are plenty more optimization you could do but you get the idea.
I have been learning a bit of jQuery and .Net in VB. I have created a product customize tool of sorts that basically layers up divs and add's text, images etc on top of a tshirt.
I'm stuck on an important stage!
I need to be able to convert the content of the div that wraps all these divs of text and images to one flat image taking into account any CSS that has been applied to it also.
I have heard of things that I could use to screen capture the content of a browser on the server which could be possible for low res thumbs etc, but it sounds a little troublesome! and it would really be nice to create an image of high res.
I have also heard to converting the html to html5 canvas then writing that out... but looks too complicated for me to fathom and browser support is an issue.
Is this possible in .NET?
Perhaps something with javascript could be done?
Any help or guidance in the correct direction would be appreciated!
EDIT:
I'm thinking perhaps I could do with two solutions for this. Ideally I would end up with a normal res jpg/png etc for displaying on the website, But also a print ready high res file would be very desirable as well.
PostScript Printer - I have heard of it but I'm struggling to find a good resource to understand it for a beginner (especially with wiki black out). Perhaps I could create a html page from my div content and send it to print to a EPS file. Anyone know any good tutorials for this?
We did this... about 10 years ago. Interestingly, the tech available really hasn't changed too much.
update - Best Answer
Spreadshirt licenses their product: http://blog.spreadshirt.net/uk/2007/11/27/everyones-a-designer-free-designers-for-premium-partners/
Just license it. Don't do this yourself, unless you have real graphics manipulating and print production experience. I'd say in today's world you're looking at somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 hours of dev time to duplicate what they did... And that's if you have two top tier people working on it.
Short answer: you can't do it in html.
Slightly longer answer:
It doesn't work in part because you can't screen cap the client side and get the level of resolution needed for production type printing. Modern screen resolution is usually on the order of 100 ppi. For a decent print you really need something between 3 and 6 times that density. Otherwise you'll have lots of pixelation and it will generally look like crap when it comes out.
A different Answer:
Your best bet is to leverage something like SVG (scalable vector graphics) and provide a type of drawing surface to the browser. There are several ways of doing this using Flash (Spreadshirt.com uses this) or Silverlight (not recommended). We used flash and it was pretty good.
You might be able to get away with using HTML 5. Regardless, whatever path you pick is going to be complicated.
Once the user is happy with their drawing and wants to print it out, you create the final file and run a process to convert it to Postscript or whatever format your t-shirt provider needs. The converter (aka RIP software) is going to either take a long time to develop or cost a bunch of money... pick one. (helpful hint: buy it. Back then, we spent around $20k US and it was far cheaper than trying to develop).
Of course, this ignores issues such as color matching and calibration. This was actually our primary problem. Everyone's monitor is slightly different and what looks like red on one machine is pink on another.
And for a little background, we were doing customized wrapping paper. The user added text, selected images from our library or uploaded their own, and picked a pattern. Our prints came out on large-format HP Inkjet printers (36" and 60" wide). Ultimately we spent between $200k and $300k just on dev resources to make it happen... and it did, unfortunately, the price point we had to sell at was too high for the market.
If you can use some server-side tool, check phantomjs. This is a headless webkit browser (with no gui) which can take a page's screenshot, an uses a javascript api. It should do the trick.
Send the whole div with user generated content back to server using ajax call.
Generate an HTML Document on server using 'HtmlTextWriter' class.
Then you can convert that HTML file using external tools like
(1) http://www.officeconvert.com/products_website_to_image.htm#easyhtmlsnapshot
(2) http://html-to-image.acasystems.com/faq-html-to-picture.htm
which are not free tools, but you can use them by creating new Process on server.
The best option I came across is wkhtmltopdf. It comes with a tool called wkhtmltoimage. It uses QtWebKit (A Qt port of the WebKit rendering engine) to render a web page, and converts the result to PDF or image format of your choice, all done at server side.
Because it uses WebKit, it renders everything (images, css and even javascript) just like a modern browser does. In my use case, the results have been very satisfying and are almost identical to what browsers would render.
To start, you may want to look at how to run external tools in .NET:
Execute an external EXE with C#.NET