Chrome API

An API wrapper for puppeteer to generate PDF documents and screenshots from URL's and HTML content

Getting Started

1. Clone the repo
2. Enter location
3. Set .env variables as per table below
4. Install dependencies
5. Run DB migrations
6. Generate API key

npm install

npx sequelize-cli db:migrate

npm run dev

npm run create-key

When not using docker, please note to set the CHROME_PATH value to the chrome executable on the machine.

Running in Docker

Run the docker-compose stack to build the local image and run in a container. Please check the available environment variables and docker network to adjust for your own setup.

When not running in Docker the CHROME_PATH to the executable needs to be set, eg on Windows the chrome executable could be something like: C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe

docker-compose up -d

Environment variables

Variable	Description
PORT	The network port to bind the application to
NODE_ENV	Required for database config (development, testing or production)
DATABASE_TYPE	The sequilize database dialect
DATABASE_NAME	Sets the MySQL database name
DATABASE_USER	Sets the MySQL database username
DATABASE_PASSWORD	Sets the MySQL database passoword
DATABASE_HOST	Sets the MySQL database host
DATABASE_PORT	Sets the MySQL database port
DATABASE_USE_SSL	If the database connection uses SSL or not. value must be one of, true/false
CHROME_PATH	Optional, defaults to /usr/bin/google-chrome. If not using docker, eg on Windows you need to provide the exe path C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe
RABBITMQ_URL	The connection url for the RabbitMQ instance e.g. amqp://{username}:{password}@{hostname}:{port}

when the RABBITMQ_URL variable is not set the service will process the request synchronously and respond with the created filename

Database migrations

Uses the Sequilize ORM

Run database migrations with npx sequelize-cli db:migrate

RabbitMQ Message Broker (optional)

For high traffic workloads a message broker (RabbitMQ) can be used. When the RABBITMQ_URL is set, the API endpoints will place jobs on a queue and return with the queue id for subsequent lookups.

API endpoints

/screenshot

Takes a screenshot from a webpage or HTML content

input parmeters:

Variable	Description
width	The width of the screenshot, defaults to 1920
height	The width of the screenshot, defaults to 1080
output	Output file type, png or jpg
url	The url of the webpage
html	The HTML content capture a screenshot of

returns:

Variable	Description
success	The outcome of the call
jobId	The id of the job in the task queue
message	The error message if the operation was not successfull

/pdf

Creates a PDF document from a webpage or HTML content

input parmeters:

Variable	Description
width	The width of the screenshot, defaults to 1920
height	The width of the screenshot, defaults to 1080
url	The url of the webpage
html	The HTML content capture a screenshot of

returns:

Variable	Description
success	The outcome of the call
jobId	The id of the job in the task queue
message	The error message if the operation was not successfull

/job/{id}

Returns the status of a job in the task queue

returns:

Variable	Description
id	The task id
complete	The completion status of the job
success	If the task was processed successfully or not
filename	The output filename, can be accessed with {endpoint}/{filename}
message	The error message if the operation was not successfull
parameters	The input prameters for the task
createdAt	Timestamp of when the job was created
updatedAt	Timestamp of when the job was updated

Authentication

Every API call needs to have an the "Authorization" HTTP header set with an api key, e.g.

Authorization: {api key}

API keys can be creted by running the "create_token.js" script e.g.

node create_token.js

Architecture

Process/data flows