Generate Screenshots from URL using ASP.NET and C#

Question

I want to generate screenshots of a website using its URL.

This I want to create using ASP.NET and C#, and I dont want to use any of the available tools and API(Url2Png, Wesnappr, Awesomium etc..).

Which classes of ASP.NET and C# should I explore for this ? How should I start about on this ?

Please can someone guide me on this.

Answer 1

Looks like fun project to do by hand...

• Read W3C site for HTML and CSS specifications (4+5 for HTML and 1+2+3 for CSS)
• Implement your own HTML engine
• Read ECMA specification to learn inner workings of JavaScript. Also dont forget to check for specific implementations for most popular browser(s) for you.
• Implement your own JavaScript engine
• Tie HTML and JavaScript engines togehter

Now when you have a way to safely render HTML on server it is an easy task: Get your engines to render page into a bitmap (may also need to implement cutom grapics library) and you are done.

More seriously - use existing tools (make sure they are ok to be used on server - ie I would not do it with IE engine). Or if you want to learn some particular part of the stack - scope the rest down (ie just render title of the page to bitmap using System.Drawing) to see how components work together.