Take website screenshots with headless Firefox

30 March, 2020

This script takes a screenshot of a website. It does so headless with Firefox. A backup is taken before doing anything. It deletes traces left during the process.

Backup

     exec 2>&1
     orig=/home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
     backup=/home/ra/tmp/firefox_backup
     rm -rf $backup
     mkdir -p $backup
     cp -r $orig $backup
     :

Create the test profile

   which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox --version
   which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox -CreateProfile headlessTest

Take the screenshot

     exec 2>&1
     start_time="$(date -u +%s)"
     dt=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S')
     filename=/tmp/$dt-headlessTest.jpg
     url=https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
     which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox \
                                          -P headlessTest \
                                          --screenshot $filename $url \
                                          --window-size=1024,768
     end_time="$(date -u +%s)"
     elapsed="$(($end_time-$start_time))"
     echo "Total of $elapsed seconds elapsed for screenshot: $filename"
     echo "Size: $(du --block-size K $filename)"
     :

Cleanup and restore

     exec 2>&1
     orig=/home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
     backup=/home/ra/tmp/firefox
     rm -rf $orig/*
     cp -r $backup/* $orig
     rm -rf $backup #Uncomment to delete the backup
     echo "Done"
     :

Fullscript

          exec 2>&1
          orig=/home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
          backup=/home/ra/tmp/firefox_backup
          rm -rf $backup
          mkdir -p $backup
          cp -r $orig $backup
          :
        which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox --version
        which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox -CreateProfile headlessTest
          exec 2>&1
          start_time="$(date -u +%s)"
          dt=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S')
          filename=/tmp/$dt-headlessTest.jpg
          url=https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
          which firefox >/dev/null 2>&1 && firefox \
                                               -P headlessTest \
                                               --screenshot $filename $url \
                                               --window-size=1024,768
          end_time="$(date -u +%s)"
          elapsed="$(($end_time-$start_time))"
          echo "Total of $elapsed seconds elapsed for screenshot: $filename"
          echo "Size: $(du --block-size K $filename)"
          :
          exec 2>&1
          orig=/home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
          backup=/home/ra/tmp/firefox
          rm -rf $orig/*
          cp -r $backup/* $orig
          rm -rf $backup #Uncomment to delete the backup
          echo "Done"
          :

4.0K /home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
4.0K /home/ra/tmp/firefox
*** You are running in headless mode.
Total of 7 seconds elapsed for screenshot: /tmp/2020-03-30-154448-headlessTest.jpg
Size: 104K	/tmp/2020-03-30-154448-headlessTest.jpg
4.0K /home/ra/.mozilla/firefox
4.0K /home/ra/tmp/firefox