@site-shot/node-red-siteshot 0.1.1

Website screenshot node for Node-RED: capture a public web page as a PNG or JPEG image with the Site-Shot screenshot API. Free plan: 100 captures a month.

npm install @site-shot/node-red-siteshot

@site-shot/node-red-siteshot

Node-RED nodes that capture a public web page as a PNG or JPEG screenshot with the Site-Shot API. The screenshot comes out of the node as a Buffer in msg.payload, ready for a write file node or any other node that takes binary data.

Requirements

• Node-RED 5.0 or later, on Node.js 22.9 or later. Node-RED recommends Node.js 24.
• A Site-Shot API key: get it at https://www.site-shot.com/start/. The key of an account with a confirmed email includes the free plan, 100 API captures a month with no card needed. Free-plan captures come only from the default location or the US, one at a time. Paid plans start at $5 a month for 2,000 captures (pricing). Every capture counts toward the plan.

Install

In the Node-RED editor, open Menu > Manage palette > Install, search for site-shot and install @site-shot/node-red-siteshot.

Or, in the Node-RED user directory, usually ~/.node-red, run the following and restart Node-RED:

npm install @site-shot/node-red-siteshot

To install from source instead, run npm pack in this repository, then run npm install <path to site-shot-node-red-siteshot-0.1.1.tgz> in your Node-RED user directory and restart Node-RED.

Get started

1. Drag a site-shot node from the network category into a flow. In its Account field, add a Site-Shot account and paste your API key into it; you find the key at https://www.site-shot.com/start/. The key is a Node-RED credential: it is not saved in the flow, never exported with it, and saving it does not contact Site-Shot.
2. Send the node a message whose msg.payload is the address of a public page, such as https://www.example.com/. The node can also read the address from another message property, or use a fixed one.
3. Wire the node's output to a write file node, or to any node that takes a Buffer.

The node's help in the editor describes its settings, the properties of the message it sends, and the error codes it reports.

Examples

Import them with Menu > Import > Examples > @site-shot/node-red-siteshot:

• 01 - Capture one page to a file: one click captures one page and writes it to a new file.
• 02 - Capture a list of pages to files: one click captures every page in a list, one after another, each into its own file.

Both write into a site-shot folder in the Node-RED working directory, under a new name for every screenshot, and show failures in the debug sidebar. Neither runs when it is deployed or when Node-RED starts: they capture only when their inject button is clicked. To capture on a schedule, set Repeat in the inject node; every run is more captures from your plan.

Behaviour to know

• One message, one capture. A failed capture is reported to Catch nodes and is not retried, because every attempt can count toward the plan. Redirects are not followed.
• Public pages only. An address must start with http:// or https://. Addresses with a user name or password, and addresses on a local or private network such as localhost or 192.168.1.10, are refused before anything is sent. The node does not resolve host names; Site-Shot refuses an address it must not capture.
• One capture at a time per node, in the order messages arrive. Up to 1000 messages wait their turn; more are refused. The free plan allows one capture at a time per key, so while one capture with a free-plan key is running, a second one from another site-shot node or another app using the same key fails with SITE_SHOT_HTTP_429. That refused request does not count.
• When the plan runs out. Once the free plan's 100 captures for the month are spent, Site-Shot answers HTTP 403 and the node fails with SITE_SHOT_HTTP_403 until the allowance renews (it renews every month), or until you buy a paid plan; the key stays the same. The same error also means the plan is inactive or the address is not allowed.
• Limits. A capture fails without an answer within 120 seconds, and a screenshot larger than 64 MiB is refused.
• Stopping and redeploying cancels the capture in flight, which Site-Shot may still finish and count, and the messages still waiting. Each of them fails with SITE_SHOT_CANCELLED, so it never triggers a Complete node.
• The API key is sent only to https://api.site-shot.com/, in the userkey query parameter that the capture API requires. It is never part of a message, the node status, an error or a log entry.

To change the time limit, set siteShotScreenshotTimeout in the Node-RED settings file, in milliseconds from 1 to 600000:

siteShotScreenshotTimeout: 300000,

License

MIT