Using the URL API

You can use the URL API to directly embed links to generated images in your content. (These images will be served from our servers.) Once you designed your template in your Placid account, you can build a URL containing infos about your template and the elements you want to dynamically change.

The base URL should look like this:

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj // - qsraj = Template ID

Example

This URL

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?title=I%20am%20a%20dynamic%20Image%21

will generate this image Placid Image

..but you can easily change the title Parameter into something else: 

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?title=Hello%20friend%21

Placid Image

Go ahead and try changing this URL and calling the image to try it out!

Parameters

You can use URL parameters named like your template layers to change the content of specific elements. If you don't include a parameter, the default value from your template will be taken.

Here's how to use the parameters for different layout elements:

Text field

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?title=I%20am%20a%20dynamic%20Image%21

Picture field

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?image=https://yourwebsite.com // - fills your image element with a screenshot of this URL or the image source if it's a file URL
https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?image=$PIC$https://yourwebsite.com/image.png // - fills your image element with the image source

Browserframe field

https://api.placid.app/u/qsraj?browser|url=example-url.com&browser|image=https://yourwebsite.com // - fills a browserframe element with a URL in the address bar and a screenshot of the given URL

Image cache

We recommend calling the URL of the generated image once so that it's already pre-generated when the social platforms are crawling your page. You can use an image scraper action within the Actions tab of Placid and add your sitemap there – then we'll pre-generate them for your.

Please note that we are keeping your generated images in our cache for a limited time. Older images will be re-generated when they are requested again.

If you have the possibility, we would recommend to store the generated images on your own server.