"Image Uploading, Cropping and Insertion - already built, just needs some work"

[geertbrit]

Read the above line in the docs. Is this still planned, since the repo seems a bit abandoned.

I might be able to put in some work to get a pull request going if I know where to start.

[joshontheweb]

The problem here is that you need a backend server with an api that can do the image processing so it isn't all just front-end code. That brings a lot of extra weight to the project and would introduce an opinion of what backend stack to use. It is starting to look like it might be possible to do the image processing on the front-end using the canvas api. I have been waiting for some time to explore that option. Any thoughts on what would best suit your needs?

[mlncn]

ImageScale would be happy to help support this with an implementation of the back-end cropping etc. as a service.

[geertbrit]

I'm already using uploadcare as the BaaS for image processing so that would fit best personally. However, I understand the opinion this would introduce.

How about an idea similar to Backbone.sync, let's call it Etch.sync, in which the backend of choice if abstracted away by a simple interface that needs to be implemented per backend? This footprint of this interface would be really small imo.

While we're at at: I've been thinking about other widgets/editors that need some backend interaction. Take an asset-picker for instance. These could follow a similar regime.

What do you think?

[mlncn]

Like the idea of abstracting the backend. Be good to have a few implementations out of the gate. Uploading / getting from a URL, storage, and processing might be handled by a three different things, two, or one.

[joshontheweb]

I think that having an abstract image processing sync object makes sense. I will try and push some code I have been working on this weekend. It allows you to upload an image from your filesystem, a url, or search flickr. Then you could send the image to the image processing sync function which would either return a url or a base64 encoded image.

[mcanthony]

What do you think about using local storage and client side API to do the image processing by default, and this can be overridden by the aforementioned backend processor?

[sspickle]

I need to work on image support. I'm trying to grasp the intent of the image handling code in the repo. I see references to ImageUploader and ImageEditor, but it's not clear to me how to implement these. Or even how to get my own image uploader/editor wired into the etch UI. Hints? I'd be happy to supply some kind of generic example when I get it working. Or maybe it's already around somewhere and I'm just having trouble finding it?

[joshontheweb]

@sspickle the difficulty with the image code is that it requires a server-side api for processing the images and also hosting them. I think that nowadays it could be possible to do this all in the browser using canvas and base64 encoded images that are dropped right into the html so no server is would be needed. I never got this far along with it. I'm happy to share what I had though it is on a different computer atm. I'll have to dig it up.