pixlserv

Pixlserv

A Go server for on-the-fly processing and serving of images. A self-hosted image management solution for websites and mobile apps.

1. Get the code and install the server

2. Connect it to Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage or just use local storage, connect it to redis

3. Start uploading and transforming images

This project is not actively developed.

Table of contents

• Installation
• Usage
  • Using pixlserv locally
  • Using pixlserv with Heroku and Amazon S3
• Configuration
  • Amazon S3
  • Google Cloud Storage
• Transformations
  • Resizing
  • Cropping
  • Gravity
  • Filters/colouring
  • Scaling (retina)
  • Named transformations
  • Watermarks and text overlays
• Authentication
• Uploads
• Requirements
• Future development
• Changelog

Installation

First get pixlserv's source code by either cloning this repository to your Go workspace:

git clone https://github.com/ReshNesh/pixlserv

or by:

go get github.com/ReshNesh/pixlserv

Navigate to the project directory and fetch dependencies:

go get

Now, build the project:

go build

Usage

Images are requested from the server by accessing a URL of the following format: http://server/image/parameters/filename. Parameters are strings like transformation_value connected with commas, e.g. w_400,h_300. A full URL could look like this: http://pixlserv.com/image/w_400,h_300/logo.jpg. Once an image is transformed in some way the copy is cached which means it can be accessed quickly next time.

Upload is done by sending an image file as an image field of a POST request to http://server/upload.

Authorisation can be easily set up to require an API key between server and image (or upload) in the example URLs above.

Using pixlserv locally

Start redis (see the Requirements section for details). Create a directory images with some JPEG or PNG images in the same directory where you installed pixlserv. Then run:

./pixlserv run config/example.yaml

This will run the server using a simple configuration defined in config/example.yaml. You are encouraged to look at the Configuration section below, create a copy of the sample configuration file and customise it to suit your needs.

Assuming you copied a file cat.jpg to the images directory you can now access http://localhost:3000/image/t_square/cat.jpg using your browser.

Using pixlserv with Heroku and Amazon S3

Heroku is a popular platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider so we will have a look at a more detailed description of how to make pixlserv work on Heroku's infrastructure.

As Heroku uses an ephemeral filesystem which doesn't allow persistent storage of data you will need to use Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Please make sure you have a bucket and a user authorised to access the bucket using the instructions in the Amazon S3 section below.

Clone this repository somewhere on your disk. If you do not plan to run the server locally it doesn't need to be in Go's workspace.

Navigate to the project directory and switch to the heroku branch:

git checkout heroku

Create a Heroku app for the new repository. You will also need a redis add-on such as Redis Cloud.

Now, you will need to configure a few environment variables, replace ??? with your S3 credentials:

heroku config:set BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/kr/heroku-buildpack-go.git
heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=??? AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=??? PIXLSERV_S3_BUCKET=???

Find out the URL of your redis instance, if you're using Redis Cloud it is:

heroku config:get REDISCLOUD_URL

Now, use the URL to set up a new environment variable:

heroku config:set PIXLSERV_REDIS_URL=???

Either create a new pixlserv configuration file (more info below) or use the example one for now and then make sure web: bin/pixlserv run CONFIG_FILE (where CONFIG_FILE is the path to your file) is the contents of a new file called Procfile:

echo web: bin/pixlserv run config/example.yaml > Procfile

Add newly created files to Git (Procfile + your new configuration file) and commit.

If there are no Heroku dynos running start one up (if you just created the Heroku app it will be the case):

heroku ps:scale web=1

Push the local heroku branch to heroku's git repository master branch:

git push heroku heroku:master

Once, the application is deployed open the browser with the index page to see if everything is fine:

heroku open

You should now see the text: It works!

You can now start requesting images stored in your S3 bucket.

Please note: uploads will not work if you're using the example configuration file without creating an API key first (refer to the Authentication section to learn more about authentication). You will want to generate a key:

heroku run bin/pixlserv api-key add

Then restart the server and use the key as part of the URL you POST to (http://APPNAME.herokuapp.com/KEY/upload).

Configuration

Pixlserv supports 3 types of underlying storage: local file system, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage. If environment variables AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY and PIXLSERV_S3_BUCKET are detected the server will try to connect to S3 given the given credentials. If not, it will try to look for GCS_ISS, GCS_KEY and PIXLSERV_GCS_BUCKET for use with Google Cloud Storage. If those are not found, local storage will be used. The path at which images will be stored locally can be specified using the local-path configuration option.

Other configuration options include throttling-rate, allow-custom-transformations, allow-custom-scale, async-uploads, authorisation, cache, jpeg-quality, transformations and upload-max-file-size. See config/example.yaml for an example.

Configuration is kept in a YAML file. In some cases its syntax could be confusing if you haven't used YAML before so please refer to some online documentation. For example, hexadecimal colours need to be in quotes (as hash would start a comment otherwise). A string n specifying gravity could be interpreted as a shorthand for boolean No and so needs to be put in quotes too.

Amazon S3

To use Amazon S3 as your storage create a bucket and a user with access to the bucket and at least the following permissions: s3:GetObject, s3:DeleteObject, s3:PutObject and s3:ListBucket. Make sure to set up the environment variables mentioned above to make the server connect to S3 instead of using local storage.

The policy for an S3 user should contain something like this (where <BUCKET> is the name of your bucket):

"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
    "s3:DeleteObject",
    "s3:GetObject",
    "s3:ListBucket",
    "s3:PutObject"
],
"Resource": [
    "arn:aws:s3:::<BUCKET>/*"
]

By default, the EU West AWS region is used when connecting to S3. You can override this by setting the PIXLSERV_S3_REGION environment variable to values described here (region names).

Google Cloud Storage

To use GCS as your storage backend you have to set up the 3 environment variables mentioned above. GCS_ISS is an email address for your service account and GCS_KEY is a private key (its entire content) that can be extracted from a .p12 file using a command like this:

openssl pkcs12 -in key.p12 -nocerts -passin pass:notasecret -nodes -out key.pem

Transformations

Resizing

Cropping

Gravity

For some cropping modes gravity determines which part of the image will be shown.

Filters/colouring

Scaling (retina)

Scales the image up to support retina devices. For example to generate a thumbnail of an image (image.jpg) at twice the size request image@2x.jpg. Only positive integers are accepted as valid scaling factors.

Named transformations

In your configuration file you can specify transformations using parameters described above and then give each transformation a name. The transformation can then be invoked using a t_mytransformation URL parameter.

Named transformations can also be set to be eager. Such transformations will be run for all images uploaded using the server straight after the upload happens.

Watermarks and text overlays (see next section) can be added to named transformations.

Watermarks and text overlays

Images can have another image applied to them as a watermark or a custom text added using a text overlay.

Both features require these configuration parameters:

Text overlays additionally require these parameters:

Note: if you supply scaled up watermarks (watermark@2x.png) these will be used for scaled images.

Authentication

The server can be set up to require an API key to be passed as part of the URL when requesting or uploading an image. This is done in the authorisation section of a configuration file.

API keys can be added, removed and modified by running ./pixlserv api-key COMMAND. Run this without COMMAND to see all the available commands. Once API keys are modified, the server needs to be restarted to use the new settings.

Uploads

The server supports image uploads if the request is properly authenticated (unless authentication is not required for uploads in the current configuration).

For the URL you need to post to refer to the Usage section above.

The POST request has to include an image field with the image. Additionally, timestamp and signature fields need to be provided if authentication for uploads is set up. timestamp is a UNIX timestamp in seconds which when received by the server should be no more than 5 minutes old. signature is a lowercase hex-encoded HMAC-SHA256 value (without the leading 0x) created from the string timestamp=??? (where ??? is the UNIX timestamp as mentioned before) and a secret key generated when creating an API key.

Requirements

A running redis instance is required for the server to be able to maintain a cache of images. Check the redis website to find out how to download and install redis. If you run redis on a different port than the default 6379 please make sure to set up a PIXLSERV_REDIS_PORT environment variable with the port you are using.

Future development

• a Javascript library for easier uploads from the browser
• Django, Rails support for generating image URLs on the server
• GUI to manage images in the browser
• a sample application

Changelog

Have a look in a separate file: CHANGELOG.md