Convert HTML to PNG in Python with virtual browser and virtual display

*Tags: #ubuntu #python *

Description

It is an example how to save a leaflet map generated with Folium as a png image.

Tools

folium selenium pyvirtualdisplay

Install Ubuntu packages

If you use a Ubuntu server and there is no graphical interface, gecko driver and Firefox need to be installed:

wget https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/v0.24.0/geckodriver-v0.24.0-linux64.tar.gz
tar xvfz geckodriver-v0.24.0-linux64.tar.gz
sudo cp geckodriver /bin/geckodriver

For the virtual display:

sudo apt install xvfb xephyr

Without using a virtual display, you will get an error in the geckodriver.log file such as:

Error: no DISPLAY environment variable specified

Install python packages

pip install folium
pip install selenium
pip install pyvirtualdisplay

Python code

from pyvirtualdisplay import Display 
from selenium import webdriver
import folium
import time

m = folium.Map(
    location=[45.5236, -122.6750],
    tiles='Stamen Toner',
    zoom_start=13,
    max_zoom=16
)

fn = 'map.html' #path to the html file

# can be defined to fit all points on the map
#m.fit_bounds([[min_lat, min_lon], [max_lat, max_lon]])
m.save(fn)

delay = 2
tmpurl = 'file://{path}/{mapfile}'.format(path=os.getcwd(),mapfile=fn)
m.save(fn)
browser.get(tmpurl)
#Give the map tiles some time to load
time.sleep(delay)
browser.save_screenshot(fn + ".png")