Function to show and/or write thumbnails generated by Mshots from WP.org

show_and_write_thumbnail_functions.php

<?php
/**
 * Display thumbs generate by Wordpress' service Mshot and write
 * locally the thumb after generation to have better loading web performance.
 *
 * Thx @jd_ma for help :)
 */
 
function show_and_write_thumbnail ($url, $width=200, $height=150) {

  // Root path of the thumbnails (should be create before use)
  $img_dir  ='screenshots/'; 
  
  // get clean hostname of the website without http(s):// and / in the end of url
  $host = parse_url($url);
  $img_name = $host['host'];
  
  // Full path of the local copy of the thumbshot
  $img_path = $img_dir.$img_name.'.png';
  
  // Time during we let the call to wordpress.com before call local copy
  $expire= time() - 600; // 10mn delay (need 30s max to mshots or apercite, but can be overloaded sometimes)
  
  // Verify if file exists otherwise call the mshots and make a local copy
  if (file_exists ($img_path) && filemtime($img_path) > $expire) {    
    $thumbnail = '<img src="'.$img_path.'" alt="screenshot '.$img_name.'" />';    
  } else { 
    $thumb= 'http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/'.urlencode($url).'?w='.$width.'&h='.$height;
    $get= file_get_contents($thumb);
    file_put_contents($img_path, $get);
    
    $thumbnail = '<img src="http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/'.urlencode($url).'?w='.$width.'&h='.$height.'" alt="screenshot '.$img_name.'"/>';
  }
  
  //return thumb
  print $thumbnail;
  
}

?>