| id | getting-started |
|---|---|
| title | Getting Started |
| description | Quickly learn how to use Urlbox's URL to PNG rendering API |
The quickest way to get started with Urlbox is to use the synchronous GET API.
To generate your first render, send a GET request to the following URL:
https://api.urlbox.io/v1/api-key/format?options
Where:
-
api-key is replaced with your Urlbox API key, which you can get by registering for an account
-
format is one of:
pngjpgjpegavifwebppdfsvghtmlmdwebmmp4 -
options is replaced by a query string that contains all of the options you want to set - for example:
url=example.com&full_page=true&width=300
When you send a GET request in this way, the Urlbox API will return binary data as the response, with the Content-Type header set to the relevant MIME type for the format requested. For example, if you requested png format, the Content-Type will be image/png and response body will be the actual PNG binary data.
This means that you can insert the request URL directly into an <img> or <meta> tag, and things should just work.
~> Urlbox also accepts HEAD requests, in case you just want to get the response status/headers without pulling down the full response body.
Let's say you want to render a png screenshot of google.com thumbnailed down to 300px wide - you could set an <img> tag's src attribute like so:
<img
src="https://api.urlbox.io/v1/api-key/png?url=google.com&thumb_width=300"
alt="Urlbox API thumbnail screenshot of google.com"
/>and the result would be: