Save static image

[wronk]

I dabble in some graph theory, and it would be great to have a way to save your visualizations to a image and/or vector format for non-web formats. Something like matplotlib's img.savefig('my_path') would be awesome (even though it throws away all the interactive functionality).

[mathisonian]

hey @wronk,

We currently have an endpoint that exposes the visualizations as images, with the following URL structure:

/visualizations/<visualization-id>/screenshot/?width=<width-in-pixels>&height=<height-in-pixels>

e.g. running locally:

http://localhost:3000/visualizations/34cc6441-5078-4d7a-b29f-2032e0e39071/screenshot/?width=1024&height=768

there's a shortcut to this link that can be accessed from the "actions dropdown" on the server:

[wronk]

Awesome, thanks. Is there any way to do that within a script?

[mathisonian]

(assuming you are in the python client)

There's no builtin method in the client right now, but you could do it like this:

# imports and initialize client
import urllib
from lightning import Lightning
lgn = Lighting()

data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
viz = lgn.line(data)

image_url = viz.get_perma_link() + '/screenshot'
# or with size parameters
# image_url = viz.get_perma_link() + '/screenshot?width=100&height=100'

# save it locally
# referenced from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8286352/how-to-save-an-image-locally-using-python-whose-url-address-i-already-know
urllib.urlretrieve(image_url, "local-filename.png")

I would be happy to accept a PR encapsulating this functionality into the python client. If you want to take a shot it can be as straightforward as adding an additional method to the visualization class here

[freeman-lab]

Yup I think that's what we're missing. Two things would probably be good to have:

1. A save_png method in the client when running against a server that can use the route @mathisonian pointed to

2. A way to do the same in the server-less mode, which will most likely need to work slightly differently.

We can start by adding (1) to the Python client, and then try to tackle (2).

---------------------------jeremyfreeman.net

@thefreemanlab

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 2:58 PM, wronk [email protected] wrote:

Awesome, thanks. Is there any way to do that within a script?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#51 (comment)

[mathisonian]

yeah, (2) is going to need to use something like http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/ or a similar approach

[wronk]

@mathisonian, I probably won't get to it anytime soon, but I'll let you guys know on this thread the moment it moves up on my priority list :)

[mathisonian]

sounds good @wronk, let us know if you run into anything else.

I've created an issue on the python client: lightning-viz/lightning-python#29, going to close this in favor of that one