simple lorem image

Installation and Usage

Prerequisites

• Node.js Version 6+
• Image-Magick

Setup

• Clone repository from github

  $ git clone https://github.com/acwtools/simpleloremimage
  

• Install dependencies via npm

  $ cd simpleloremimage && npm install
  

• copy your image files to source_image directory

• run server

  $ npm start
  

Use

• make sure you have images in source_image directory

  $ cd simpleloremimage
  $ ls
    beach.png city.png city2.png city3.png sports.png sports2.png
  

• call server with desired image size and limit result set with topic parameter

  http://localhost:3000/:width/:height/:topic?
  

  Examples

  $ curl http://localhost:3000/320/250/city
  
  <img src="http://localhost:3000/640/480/city" width="640" height="480" alt="Simple Lorem Image" />
  

This example would return only images with the string "city" in their names.

Features

• Filters images in source directory by topic
• Shuffles the resulting list
• Any scaled image is resized just once
• Redirects to the static path of the resulting image
• Images are cacheable in browser

Known issues

• The app is as simple as possible
• Requires Node.js 6
• There is no security at all, see below
• There is no support for uploading images but can be archived with any third party image upload or (s)ftp tool
• There is no support for subdirectories
• The app might get slow with lots of images

Security

• There is no security at all and there won't be in a foreseeable future, so use with care!
• The app is intended for local development only, behind a firewall or in a virtual machine
• Anyone could create as many sizes of each image as possible, flooding your hdd

Why

• Existing online services did not satisfy the following requirements
  • Accurate, presentable images for each relevant topic
  • Fast, without impact on page load