You aren't limited to using only the Blitline API functions.

We have a safe and secure mechanism for allowing you to run your own image processing scripts on Blitline. This includes anything you can do from a command line on your computer you can do in the massively parallel Blitline cloud platform.

This means you can run your already existing ImageMagick scripts on our cloud.

IS THIS SAFE?

Using Linux containers, Blitline can instantly execute a job is a pristine Ubuntu VM, and then discard that VM in milliseconds. This VM has no contact with the host or other VMs, only a network connection to the outside world. You can do WHATEVER you want on that machine, and they have many up-to-date libraries installed such as Ruby and AWS command line tools.

LET’S SEE HOW…

First, build your scripts on your local machine. Ideally you have it as a single text file, or even multiple files (which we’ll talk about later).

Once you have your scripts written and working we can add them to a Blitline job. You will be using a blitline function called “script” which will push your script to a VM and run it there. If you script is just some text, you can use a “param” : { “bash_string” : “MY_BASH_CODE” } to define the commands to be run on the VM.

Here are some important points to know about beforehand:

You will be running your scripts on an ubuntu platform with ImageMagick installed.
If you want Blitline to use the results of your image processing, you MUST output a file named “output.png”. Blitline will pick this file up and continue processing with it
If you want to use the current image context from a Blitline job, the VM will be initialized with an “input.png” available to your scripts.
You will have a limited amount of memory ~ 1G
You will have a shared amount of CPU
You will have a HARD 5 minute limit, anything over that will be kill -9’ed

EXAMPLE #1

Lets assume you have a script that does a little tilt-shift on your images:

convert input.png -sigmoidal-contrast 15x30% contrast.jpgconvert contrast.jpg -sparse-color Barycentric '0,0 black 0,%h white' -function polynomial 4,-4,1 blurmap.jpgconvert contrast.jpg blurmap.jpg -compose Blur -set option:compose:args 10 -composite output.png

This script takes the file input.png and performs some ImageMagick functions on it, creates two intermediate files, ultimately generating an output.png which Blitline will pick up and continue processing.

Lets run it on Blitline…

{
   	"application_id": "YOUR_APP_ID",
   	"src": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/img.blitline/samples/beijing.jpg",
   	"functions": [{
   		"name": "script",
   		"params": {
   			"bash_string": "convert input.png -sigmoidal-contrast 15x30% contrast.jpg \nconvert contrast.jpg -sparse-color Barycentric '0,0 black 0,%h white' -function polynomial 4,-4,1 blurmap.jpg\nconvert contrast.jpg blurmap.jpg -compose Blur -set option:compose:args 10 -composite output.png"
   		},
   		"save": {
   			"extension": ".png",
   			"image_identifier": "MY_CLIENT_ID"
   		}
   	}]
}

Notice we’ve taken the script, and turned it into a single string (with \n as the carriage return)

See it run HERE!

EXAMPLE #2 (MULTIPLE SHELL SCRIPTS)

Sometimes your image processing scripts are too large or spread across too many files to just shove into a text string like above. This method allows you to download all your scripts used for processing into a VM and then define the execution string for processing your image (This feature ONLY works with scripts that are available to download publicly on the web)

Let’s assume you have two scripts you need to have present to process your image: tile_with_curl.sh and page_curl.sh

https://s3.amazonaws.com/blitdoc/scripts/page_curl.shhttps://s3.amazonaws.com/blitdoc/scripts/tilt_then_curl.sh

Lets run it on Blitline….

You run it in a similar way as above. You will assume there is an input.pngand you will make your output file be named output.png

This time, though, you will have different “params” for the “script” function:

files : A comma delimited list of files Blitline needs to download to the VM
executable : The shell command required to run the scripts

{
  "application_id": "YOUR_APP_ID",
  "src": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/img.blitline/samples/beijing.jpg",
  "functions": [{
	  "name": "script",
	  "params": {
		  "files": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/blitdoc/scripts/page_curl.sh,https://s3.amazonaws.com/blitdoc/scripts/tilt_then_curl.sh"
		  "executable": "tilt_and_curl.sh input.png output.png"
	  },
	  "save": {
		  "extension": ".png",
		  "image_identifier": "MY_CLIENT_ID"
	  }
  }]
}

Blitline will create the VM, download the script files, and execute the command, creating the desired image using your own scripts.

See it run HERE!