Project: couch_photo - The Ruby Toolbox

#CouchPhoto

CouchPhoto is a mixin for auto-generating image variations on Image documents with CouchDB.

##Installation

CouchPhoto is available as a gem. You can install it directly via:

$ gem install couch_photo --pre

Or, you can add the following to your projects Gemfile if you're using bundler:

gem "couch_photo", '~> 1.0.0.beta.1'

Documentation

Browse the documentation on relishapp.com: http://relishapp.com/moonmaster9000/couch-photo

##How does it work?

Just "include CouchPhoto" in your "CouchRest::Model::Base" classes and you can start creating image documents and autogenerating variations with ease.

The original image

Each image document is centered around the concept of the "original" image. This is the original, unpolluted image that forms the core of the document.

You can use the load_original_from_file method on an instance of your Image class to create an image document with an original image from your filesystem:

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchPhoto
end

@image = Image.new
@image.load_original_from_file "/path/to/my_file.jpg"
@image.save

Here, we've created a new image instance, then added an "original" image to it via the load_original_from_file method by specifiying a file on the disk. Upon save, this file is read from disk and stored in CouchDB. We could now access our original image thusly:

@image.original.original_filename # ==> "my_file.jpg"
@image.original.path              # ==> "/your_image_database/8383830jlkfdjskalfjdirewio/variations/original.jpg"
@image.original.url               # ==> "http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/8383830jlkfdjskalfjdirewio/variations/original.jpg"
@image.original.extension         # ==> "jpg"
@image.original.mimetype          # ==> "image/jpg"
@image.original.data              # ==> BINARY BLOB
@image.original.width             # ==> 720
@image.original.height            # ==> 480

Suppose the original image isn't on file, but simply in memory (perhaps this was a form upload). You can use the load_original method to pass a raw binary blob via the :data parameter:

@image.load_original :filename => "my_file.jpg", :data => File.read("/path/to/my_file.jpg")

The `override_id!` method

Instead of letting CouchDB generate a UUID for your image documents, you'll likely prefer that the basename of the "original" become the ID of your document.

You can accomplish this by simply calling the override_id! method inside your class definition:

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchPhoto
  override_id!
end

Now, if you create a new image document with an original, you'll have a much more human readable path to the original image on your CouchDB server:

@image = Image.new
@image.load_original_from_file "/path/to/my_file.jpg"
@image.save
@image.original.url #==> http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/my_file.jpg/variations/original.jpg

###Simple Variations

Let's imagine we want to auto-generate small, medium, and large variations of our image everytime it gets updated.

First, define an Image document and set the versions on it:

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  use_database IMAGE_DB
  include CouchPhoto

  override_id! # the id of the document will be the basename of the original image file

  variations do
    small "20x20"
    medium "100x100"
    large "500x500"
  end
end

Next, create an instance of the image document and set the "original" image on it.

i = Image.new
i.load_original_from_file "/path/to/avatar.jpg"
i.save

Now, if you look in your image document in CouchDB, you'll see the following attachments:

http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/original.jpg
http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/variations/small.jpg
http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/variations/medium.jpg
http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/variations/large.jpg

###Complex Variations

The previous variations were all simple image resizings. What if we wanted to do something a little more complex? Like grayscale the original image? Or create a watermark? No prob!

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  use_database IMAGE_DB
  include CouchPhoto

  override_id! # the id of the document will be the basename of the original image file

  variations do
    grayscale do |original_image|
      original_image.monochrome
    end

    watermark do |original_image|
      original_image.composite(MiniMagick::Image.open("watermark.png", "jpg") do |c|
        c.gravity "center"
      end
    end
  end
end

The original_image variable in the blocks is simply the MiniMagick::Image instance of your original image.

Accessing Variations

So, now that you've got some variations, how do you access them? Simple!

Let's go back to our original image example:

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  include CouchPhoto

  override_id!

  variations do
    small "20x20"
    medium "100x100"
    large "500x500"
  end
end

i = Image.new
i.load_original_from_file "/path/to/couchdb.jpg"
i.save

The variations method on our model is a hash of all the variations; the keys are the variation names, and the values are a variation object:

We can access our variations in one of three ways:

the variations method, which will allow you to iterate over the variation_name/variation pairs via the each method
the variation.<variation_name> method, which returns a specific variation
the variation[:<variation_name>], which also returns a specific variation

For example:

# iterate over all variations
i.variations.each do |variation_name, variation_image|
  puts variation_name
  puts variation.filename
  # etc...
end

# access the "small" variation
i.variations.small

# access the "large" variation
i.variations["large"]
#or...
i.variations[:large]

Once you've got a variation, you can call several methods on it:

i.variations[:small].name        # ==> "small"
i.variations[:small].path        # ==> "/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/variations/small.jpg"
i.variations[:small].url         # ==> "http://your.couch.server/your_image_database/avatar.jpg/variations/small.jpg"
i.variations[:small].width       # ==> 50
i.variations[:small].height      # ==> 50
i.variations[:small].basename    # ==> "small.jpg"
i.variations[:small].filetype    # ==> "jpg"
i.variations[:small].mimetype    # ==> "image/jpg"
i.variations[:small].data        # ==> BINARY BLOB

Creating Custom Variations

If you'd like to add a variation to your image document that's not predefined / autogenerated, you can use the load_custom_variation and load_custom_variation_from_file methods:

i = Image.new
i.load_original_from_file "/path/to/somefile.jpg"
i.load_custom_variation_from_file "/path/to/small_watermark.jpg"
i.load_custom_variation :filename => "large_greyscale.jpg", :data => File.read("/path/to/some_image.jpg")
i.save

These images would be accessible via the following urls:

http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/somefile.jpg/variations/original.jpg
http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/somefile.jpg/variations/small_watermark.jpg
http://your_couch_server/your_image_database/somefile.jpg/variations/large_watermark.jpg

Adding extra properties to your variations

Perhaps you'd like to add some extra properties that you can save for each of your image variations, like "alt" text, or captions. Simply use the metadata hash on your variations.

For example, given the following definition:

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  use_database IMAGE_DB
  include CouchPhoto

  variations do
    thumbnail "20x20"
    grayscale do |original_image|
      original_image.monochrome
    end
  end
end

You could now set any metadata properties you desire on your variations:

@image = Image.first
@image.variations[:small].metadata["alt"] = "alt text"
@image.variations[:grayscale].metadata["caption"] = "Grayscale version of: #{@image.original.url}"
@image.save

XMP Metadata

Need to access the XMP Metadata on your original? It's as simple as adding extract_xmp_metadata! into your document definition.

class Image < CouchRest::Model::Base
  use_database IMAGE_DB
  include CouchPhoto

  extract_xmp_metadata!
  override_id! # the id of the document will be the basename of the original image file

  variations do
    small "20x20"
    medium "100x100"
    large "500x500"
  end
end

i = Image.new
i.load_original_from_file "avatar.jpg"
i.save

Now you can access your image's XMP metadata as a hash by calling i.xmp_metadata.

couch_photo

Development

Runtime

Documentation

The original image

The `override_id!` method

Accessing Variations

Creating Custom Variations

Adding extra properties to your variations

XMP Metadata

couch_photo

Development

Runtime

Documentation

The original image

The override_id! method

Accessing Variations

Creating Custom Variations

Adding extra properties to your variations

XMP Metadata

The `override_id!` method