NAME

Win32::CaptureIE - Capture web pages or its elements rendered by Internet Explorer

SYNOPSIS

  use Win32::CaptureIE;

  StartIE;
  Navigate('http://my.server/page.html');

  my $img = CaptureElement('tab_user_options');
  $img->Write("ie-elem.png");

  QuitIE;

DESCRIPTION

The package enables you to automatically create screenshots of your web server pages for the user guide or whatever you need it for. The best part is that you don't bother yourself with scrolling and object localization. Just tell the ID of the element and receive an Image::Magick object. The package will do all the scrolling work, it will take the screenshots and glue the parts together.

EXPORT

:default

CaptureBrowser CaptureElement CapturePage GetDoc GetElement Navigate QuitIE Refresh StartIE $Body $CaptureBorder $Doc $HWND_Browser $HWND_IE $IE

Internet Explorer controlling functions

StartIE ( %params )

This function creates a new Internet Explorer process via Win32::OLE. You can specify width and height of the window as parameters.

  StartIE( width => 808, height => 600 );

The function will bring the window to the top and try to locate the child window where the page is rendered.

QuitIE ( )

Terminates the Internet Explorer process and destroys the Win32::OLE object.

Navigate ( $url )

Loads the specified page and waits until the page is completely loaded. Then it will call GetDoc function.

Refresh ( )

Refreshes the currently loaded page and calls GetDoc function.

GetDoc ( )

Loads $Doc and $Body global variables.

GetElement ( $id )

Returns the object of specified ID by calling document->getElementById().

Capturing functions

These function works like other Capture*(...) functions from Win32::Screenshot package.

CaptureBrowser ( )

Captures whole Internet Explorer window including the window title and border.

CapturePage ( )

Captures whole page currently loaded in the Internet Explorer window. Only the page content will be captured - no window, no scrollbars. If the page is smaller than the window only the occupied part of the window will be captured. If the page is longer (scrollbars are active) the function will capture the whole page step by step by scrolling the window content (in all directions) and will return an complete image of the page.

CaptureElement ( $id | $element )

Captures the element specified by its ID or passed as reference to the element object. It will capture a small border around the element specified by $CaptureBorder global variable. The function will scroll the page content to show the top of the element and scroll down and right step by step to get whole area occupied by the object.

Global variables

$CaptureBorder

The function CaptureElement is able to capture the element and a small area around it. How much of surrounding space will be captured is defined by $CaptureBorder. It is not recommended to capture more than 3-5 pixels because parts of other elements could be captured as well. Default border is 1 pixel wide.

$IE

The function StartIE will create a new Internet Explorer process and its Win32::OLE reference will be stored in this variable. See the MSDN documentation for InternetExplorer object.

$Doc

The function GetDoc will assign $IE->{Document} into this variable. See the MSDN documentation for Document object.

$Body

The function GetDoc will assign $IE->{Document}->{Body} into this variable. See the MSDN documentation for BODY object.

$HWND_IE

The function StartIE will assign the handle of the Internet Explorer window into this variable from $IE->{HWND}.

$HWND_Browser

The function StartIE will try to find the largest child window and suppose that this is the area where is the page rendered. It is used to convert page coordinates to screen coordinates.

BUGS

• Access denied

  Sometimes I receive the error message 'Access denied' when accessing $Doc->{parentWindow} properties and methods (scrollBy and scrollTo methods are called from the package functions). Sometimes I have to close all running IE windows or restart computer if it's not enough to solve the problem. I will appreciate any help.

SEE ALSO

MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library You can find there the description of InternetExplorer object and DOM.

Win32::Screenshot

This package is used for capturing screenshots. Use its post-processing features for automatic screenshot modification.

AUTHOR

P.Smejkal, <petr.smejkal@seznam.cz>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright (C) 2004 by P.Smejkal

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.2 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.