fen-to-imagebeta

FEN-to-Image Manual

Sometimes we all do need a nice chess diagram to put on the web site. Usually it takes a lot of time and patience to create a diagram in chess software, save the image and upload it to the web-site. And it takes much more if there are corrections to be made or the pictures are wrong size and should be resized. Automatically generating chess diagrams from the FEN notation solves all these problems – pictures are saved as a short description right on the page, easy to correct or change size or add/remove coordinates from the board.

fen-to-image sample screenshot

Basics

Append your FEN position to the URL http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/ and put it into the <img> tag anywhere on your web-site. We don't need castling rights, move order, en-passant squares or anything else. For example, if you have FEN position:

rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1

the correct URL becomes: http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR (clickable)

Options

There are a few options controlling board size and appearance.
  • Font
  • Size
  • Border
  • Coordinates

Options can be added to the URL just before the FEN string in arbitrary order, separated by forward slash "/".

Font

Currently the "Font" option is of limited use because there's only one font – alpha2. More fonts may be added later.

Cell size

Board size could be specified as a numeric parameter describing the size of one board cell. The default size is 24. Minimum/maximum possible values are 16/128, that results in boards from 128x128 to 1024x1024 pixels large. If you need larger/smaller boards, please, contact us. The above mentioned board rendered in size 36 would look like this: http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/36/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR (clickable)

Borders

There are two different border styles, single and double border.

Single border sample URL: http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/36/single/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR (clickable)

Double border sample URL: http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/36/double/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR (clickable)

Diagrams with borders are bigger than borderless ones. If you specify board cell size 16, the borderless diagram would be 128x128 (8x8 cells) and with the border it becomes 160x160 (10x10 cells).

Coordinates

Coordinates can be shown using coords option along with single or double border. There are no coordinates on the borderless board. Here's a sample with the coordinates: http://www.fen-to-image.com/image/36/double/coords/rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR (clickable)

Automated or scripted requests

This site is not intended to be used for automated or scripted requests that generate heavy traffic. Using script to create a few dozens of diagrams is fine, but please, avoid large batches or try to spread them over the time to allow other people to use this service.

How much does this cost

This is a free project, and hopefully it will remain free for a foreseeable future.