Blog Card Generator

Blog Card Generator is a simple Node.js application that generates blog card images using the node-canvas library.

Getting started

Run npm install to install dependencies

Run npm run dev to start the server

How it works

To run the Blog Card Generator, follow these steps:

1. Make sure the development server is running (by running npm run dev)

2. Use a tool like Postman to send a POST request to the endpoint: http://localhost:3000/image.

3. Include the following fields in the body of the request:

   Field	Description
   bgImage	png or jpg file of the background image (you can use the sample background image in /static/sample-background.png)
   title	Title that will be displayed on the blog card
   color	Hex code of the colour of the text

4. Review the response to get the generated blog card image.

How it works

When you make a POST request, the following actions happen:

1. The background image is processed.
2. A canvas is created.
3. A textBoundingBox is defined to represent the boundaries of the printed text.
4. The maximum possible font size for the title within the textBoundingBox is calculated, and the title is organised into an array of lines.
5. The text is painted onto the canvas:
   • The total height of the words is calculated.
   • Each line of text is painted, and the Y position is adjusted for each line.
6. The canvas is sent as a JPEG image in the response.

How to customise

The behaviour of the application can be adjusted by modifying the following constants located at the top of index.js:

• CANVAS_WIDTH: Specifies the width of the blog card image.
• CANVAS_HEIGHT: Specifies the height of the blog card image.
• TEXT_BOUNDING_BOX_WIDTH: Determines the width of the text container box.
• TEXT_BOUNDING_BOX_HEIGHT: Determines the height of the text container box.
• LINE_HEIGHT: Controls the line height of the text.
• MIN_FONT_SIZE: Sets the minimum font size for the text.
• MAX_FONT_SIZE: Sets the maximum font size for the text.
• FONT: Sets the minimum font size for the text.
• SCALE: A scaling factor applied to all measurements to upscale the image. To ensure optimal image quality, we recommend scaling the images up by a factor of 3. This ensures that the resulting image looks good at the desired size.

The application dynamically adjusts the text size based on the length of the title. As a result, images with shorter titles will have larger text sizes, while longer titles will have smaller text sizes.