Display static webpage

[MarqueeCrew]

I want to display a webpage like:  https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-Action/ta-p/35500.

So suppose I have the URL as a field:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-Action/ta-p/35500

What steps do I follow to output the static page?  

Thanks in advance,

Mark

[mceleavey]

Hi @MarqueeCrew,

Do you mean displaying the actual website within the workflow in the Explorer Box, or rendering a static image to output as, say, a .pdf?

[MarqueeCrew]

The ability to print a PDF of a specific page.

[mceleavey]

Yeah, I've tried to do this myself but haven't figured it out. I have a feeling there should be a way of extracting the raw HTML and rendering it somehow, but it doesn't seem to want to play.

I'll try and have a go today and I'll let you know if I get anywhere.

[MarqueeCrew]

@mceleavey,

I've created a workflow that reads through the community knowledge base articles and filters them into two (2) types of articles:  Tool Mastery and Others.  From this I generate an index for the articles.  My thought was to create an extract ability for a specific article to print the Original post (without comments) or the whole discussion to a PDF.  This is not client work, so I have no sense of urgency.  I can link the user to the community page, so they can print if they want.  But the challenge to control the html was set when I couldn't figure out how to do it.

I'm tagging @LeahK, @MattD and @JoeM as well as @TaraM from Alteryx (not to get them to solve the challenge), but to see the type of content that I've created.  I modeled this after Joe's weekly challenge index.  The purpose was to make finding Tool Mastery articles easier.  I mentioned in a post to Tara that ideally I'd like to see an interactive periodic table that offers links to Tool Mastery articles.  I later noticed that KB articles take a priority in the search results from designer.

The workflow that generates this index makes use of the designer configuration data to apply "Tool Groups" to the actual tools.  It is somewhat dynamic in that it gets updated with each new release but that feature makes it a little less portable.  Your feedback is welcome.

Cheers,

Mark

[StephenR]

Quick thought, don't have the opportunity to set up a workflow, but could you download the page as a BLOB and run it through the Image tool then Render as PDF?  We do this for Google Streetview Imagery, I'm not sure if it will work the same way though.

[MarqueeCrew]

Nice try, but "blob" is not a recognized image type.

[mceleavey]

Yeah, I tried that.

You can also try converting the blob to a png but the structure is HTML, and won't convert.

At the risk of sounding like Michael Caine, hold on lads...I've got an idea.

[PaulN]

Hi @MarqueeCrew,

Have you looked in the direction of phantomjs (http://phantomjs.org/) used in HTML Render tool of CReW Macros among other things.

It could be used through a simple run command tool to convert a webpage into a PDF or a picture.

[SophiaF · Accepted solution]

Neat idea! I already can see this being useful. Here's my take on it - basically calling this API to download the webpage as a pdf. There is some control of the printout with the various parameters, but unfortunately its 'all or nothing', so perhaps someone else can think of a way to limit it to just the article without discussions?

Alternatively, if you use the URL_created field, you can create a link which, when opened in a broswer, will download the file to the location the user specifies: