How to submit HTML and receive a bitmap?

Question

I have an app that allows a user to use JQuery and Javascript to add images and position them in a div dynamically.

I would like to be able to submit the div with all the HTML to a WebService and receive back an image so we have a bitmap of the result of the end user's work.

I would prefer a solution in .Net as this is what I am most familiar with but am open to pretty much anything?

Answer 1

I would like to be able to submit the div with all the HTML to a WebService and receive back an image

Try http://browsershots.org!

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers. It is a free open-source online web application providing developers a convenient way to test their website's browser compatibility in one place.

Answer 2

How about this. You load the html into a webbrowser control and then use the DrawToBitmap method. It doesn't show up on intellisense and this is probably not the best solution, but it works. Observe the DocumentCompleted event and add the following code:

private void webBrowser_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)
{
  var bmp = new Bitmap(100, 100);
  var rect = new Rectangle(webBrowser.Location.X, webBrowser.Location.Y, webBrowser.Width, webBrowser.Height);
  webBrowser.DrawToBitmap(bmp, rect);
  bmp.Save("test.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
}

You'll probably want to change the width and height of that bitmap object (do it in some smart way or something). Hope this helps.

EDIT: I see now that you are using a webservice for this, hence this solution probably won't work. I'll leave it here just for information's sake.

Answer 3

I was not able to figure out how to do this by submitting the html and receiving an image but I was able to create and ASHX handler that returns a png file based on this blog post which was good enough for my scenario.

He uses CutyCapt to take a screen shot of an existing web page, write the image to a folder on the webserver and return it.