Using Processing on a server to create images behind the scenes

Question

The way I see most people use Processing is for drawing an image directly onto a screen or webpage on the client side.

How would one use Processing to create an imag

Answer 1

I've done this, using Processing in a Servlet to render images on the fly. A problem I found is that Processing isn't thread-safe, so I had to create multiple Processing instances and share them in a queue.

Here's a servlet which renders Mandelbrot fractals, to be used by Google Maps as an overlay:

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import processing.core.PApplet;

public class Tile extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private static LinkedBlockingQueue pQueue = new LinkedBlockingQueue();

    private PApplet createPApplet() {
        PApplet p = new PApplet();
        p.init();
        p.size(256, 256);
        p.noLoop();
        p.textFont(p.createFont("Monospace", 8, true));
        p.stroke(0x22FFFFFF);
        p.colorMode(PApplet.HSB, 256, 1, 1);
        return p;
    }

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        PApplet p;

        if (pQueue.size() == 0) {
            p = createPApplet();
        } else {
            try {
                p = pQueue.take();
            } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                p = createPApplet();
            }
        }

        int zoom = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("z"));
        int tileX = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("x"));
        int tileY = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("y"));
        int tiles = 1 << zoom;

        p.loadPixels();

        final int N = 256;
        //final double inverse_N = 2.0 / 256;
        final double inverse_N = 2.0 / tiles / 256;
        int y = -1;

        while ((++y) < N) {
            double Civ = (double) (y + tileY * 256) * inverse_N - 1.0;
            for (int x = 0; x < N; x++) {
                double Crv = (double) (x + tileX * 256) * inverse_N - 1.5;

                double Zrv = Crv;
                double Ziv = Civ;

                double Trv = Crv * Crv;
                double Tiv = Civ * Civ;

                int i = 256;
                do {
                    Ziv = (Zrv * Ziv) + (Zrv * Ziv) + Civ;
                    Zrv = Trv - Tiv + Crv;

                    Trv = Zrv * Zrv;
                    Tiv = Ziv * Ziv;
                } while (((Trv + Tiv) <= 4.0) && (--i > 0));

                if (i == 0) {
                    p.pixels[x + y * N] = 0x00000000;
                } else {
                    p.pixels[x + y * N] = p.color(256 - i,1,1);
                }
            } // end foreach column
        }
        p.updatePixels();

        // render info
        p.fill(0x22000000);
        p.text("X: " + tileX + "\nY: " + tileY + "\nZ: " + zoom, 1, 13);
        p.fill(0x22FFFFFF);
        p.text("X: " + tileX + "\nY: " + tileY + "\nZ: " + zoom, 0, 12);

        p.line(0, 0, 0, 2);
        p.line(0, 0, 2, 0);
        p.line(255, 255, 255, 253);
        p.line(255, 255, 253, 255);

        // done
        p.loadPixels();
        BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage(256, 256,
                BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
        img.setRGB(0, 0, 256, 256, p.pixels, 0, 256);
        p.draw();

        response.setHeader("Content-Type", "image/png");
        ImageIO.write(img, "PNG", response.getOutputStream());

        try {
            pQueue.put(p);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}