= Running the !ShotFactory without a !ShotServer =

Since milestone:0.4-beta2 it is possible to run the ShotFactory without a 
ShotServer installation.

== Create queue and output folder ==

Create two folders, one for the screenshot request queue, and one for the 
resulting PNG files.

{{{
$ mkdir queue output
}}}

== Install the !ShotFactory and run it ==

See INSTALL for installation instructions.

When you run it, specify the queue and output folders on the command line. 
The folders used below are examples. They can be anywhere, but the 
ShotFactory must have read and write access to both of them.

{{{
shotfactory.py --queue /var/spool/shotfactory/queue --output /var/www/png
}}}

You can generate thumbnails too. The following example saves the original 
PNG files, and also thumbnails that are 640 and 120 pixels wide, in the 
output folders '''original''', '''large''' and '''small'''. These three 
folders must already exist (in the current directory, because  they're 
specified as relative paths here). This feature requires the '''pnmscale''' 
program from the '''netpbm''' package.

{{{
shotfactory.py --queue queue --output original --resize-output 640 large 
--resize-output 120 small
}}}

If you only need the first screen of each website, you can limit the number 
of pages to scroll down. This is useful for faster processing.

{{{
shotfactory.py --max-pages 1
}}}

To see a complete list of available options:

{{{
shotfactory.py --help
}}}

== Parallel operation == 

On Linux, you can run several screenshot factories on the same machine 
(using separate user accounts).

If you store the queue and output folders on a NFS share, several machines 
can work together. The file system must support atomic renames to avoid 
race conditions. Otherwise, two factories may process the same screenshot 
request.

== Request screenshots ==

Now you can request screenshots by creating files in the queue directory, 
like this:

{{{
$ echo url http://www.example.com/ > queue/123
$ echo url http://www.example.org/ > queue/abc
}}}

If everything works, the ShotFactory will create the screenshot files 
'''123.png''' and '''abc.png''' in the output folder.

Here's a more complete example for a screenshot request file:

{{{
request 123
url http://www.example.com/
width 1024
height 768
bpp 24
browser Firefox
command firefox
}}}

If the '''request''' parameter is given, its value will be the name of the 
screenshot file, with '''.png''' appended. Otherwise, the name of the 
screenshot request file will be used, also with '''.png''' added to it.

All other parameters except '''url''' are optional. Their default values 
are as in the example above.