Thumbnail Action

The Thumbnail Action tells the Alexa Site Thumbnail web service to return a URL to a thumbnail image for a specified web page.

The response body includes a <Thumbnail> tag whose value is a signed and expirable URL to the desired thumbnail. After the request is processed the final consumer (e.g. client browser) has at least 10 seconds to fetch the thumbnail image. After this window the URL is expired and will return a non-200 response code with an error message.

If the image does not exist in the Alexa thumbnail store, a default image with the words "image coming soon" and the Alexa logo of the specified size will be returned. In this case the user does not get charged. Users can tell whether the image URL in the response document is the desired thumbnail or a default "no image" image by checking the value of the "Exists" attribute of the <Thumbnail> tag. "Exists" is set to "true" only if the returned image URL is a real thumbnail. Otherwise "Exists" is set to "false".

Please refer to the Response Schema section for a more detailed description of the response object.

Using the Thumbnail Action - single request

The following Thumbnail action example demonstrates how to make a QUERY request.

http://awis.amazonaws.com/xino/xml?Action=Thumbnail
                    &AWSAccessKeyId=
                    [Your AWS Access Key ID]
                    &Signature=
                    [signature]
                    &Timestamp=
                    [timestamp used in signature]
                    &Url=
                    [Valid URL]
                    &Size=
                    [Large or Small]

Using the Thumbnail Action - batch request

The following Thumbnail action example demonstrates how to make a QUERY request in batch mode. Batch mode can support up to 20 requests at a time.

http://awis.amazonaws.com/xino/xml?Action=Thumbnail
                    &AWSAccessKeyId=
                    [Your AWS Access Key ID]
                    &Signature=
                    [signature]
                    &Timestamp=
                    [timestamp used in signature]
                    &Shared.Size=
                    [Large or Small for all thumbnails]
                    &Thumbnail.1.Url=
                    [Valid URL #1]
                    &Thumbnail.2.Url=
                    [Valid URL #2]
                    &Thumbnail.3.Url=
                    [Valid URL #3]
                    ...

The Thumbnail Action takes the following parameters. Required parameters must be provided for the request to succeed.

Name	Required	Description
Action	yes	Use the Action parameter to specify the name of the action you would like to perform.
Url	yes	Url is required in all Thumbnail action requests to the Alexa Site Thumbnail web service. The Url parameter tells the service what web site to retrieve a thumbnail for. Url may include the "http://" protocol prefix, subdomain, port, path, and URL parameters. The path and parameter parts of Url only matter for certain web sites such as blog sites or portals. Do not forget to UrlEncode the Url parameter for QUERY requests.
Size	no	Size of the returned thumbnail (Small = 111x82 pixels, Large = 201x147 pixels). If this parameter is not specified it defaults to "Large". See AST Details for more information on AST thumbnails.