# Images again **URL:** \ **Category:** Radiant CMS\ **Created:** [June 5, 2007, 9:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984 "2007-06-05T09:47:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 9:47am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/1 "2007-06-05T09:47:34Z")
Hi again I’ve followed the discussion about using page attachments for images with great interest, and finally we got it working too. However, because you can’t reference attachments from snippets or layouts, this doesn’t really seem like a good solution for images that reoccur throughout a website design (such as a logo or whatever). Surely there must be some way to reference static images somehow? I can’t find any documentation on this. Eg, is there some directory in a radiant project that will act as web root, or can one be created? Thanks for any help, ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 10:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/2 "2007-06-05T10:07:37Z")
Il giorno 05/giu/07, alle ore 09:46, Johan Rönnblom ha scritto: > Hi again > > I’ve followed the discussion about using page attachments for > images with great interest, and finally we got it working too. > However, because you can’t reference attachments from snippets or > layouts, this doesn’t really seem like a good solution for images > that reoccur throughout a website design (such as a logo or whatever). I use Gallery extension to do that…I usually create a gallery called Layout and I set it as hidden, so it doesn’t appear in the galleries list page. Then I use images with this tag: \ …or… \ if you want to read more check the README file here: [http://darcs.bigchieflabs.com/radiant/extensions/gallery/rdoc/](http://darcs.bigchieflabs.com/radiant/extensions/gallery/rdoc/) Ciao! * * * Andrea F. removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [http://bigchieflabs.com/blog/](http://bigchieflabs.com/blog/) [http://think.bigchief.it](http://think.bigchief.it) ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 1:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/3 "2007-06-05T13:13:47Z")
Andrea F. wrote: > I use Gallery extension to do that…I usually create a gallery > called Layout and I set it as hidden, so it doesn’t appear in the > galleries list page. Ok. It seems the Gallery extension relies on having a lot of stuff installed though. Presumably the web root is in public/ and that just linking statically to some files there will work. Of course this requires access to put new files there, but that should not be a problem for ‘site-global’ content… so I guess we’ll use that and then get the attachments plugin when that works with a stable release. ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 4:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/4 "2007-06-05T16:06:23Z")
Johan Rönnblom wrote: > Hi again > > I’ve followed the discussion about using page attachments for images with great interest, and finally we got it working too. However, because you can’t reference attachments from snippets or layouts, this doesn’t really seem like a good solution for images that reoccur throughout a website design (such as a logo or whatever). Surely there must be some way to reference static images somehow? I can’t find any documentation on this. Eg, is there some directory in a radiant project that will act as web root, or can one be created? > > Thanks for any help, Your only option with page attachments for site-wide images is to attach them to the root page. The current method for finding attachments is to search the current page and then the parent pages recursively. Sean ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/5 "2007-06-05T17:17:48Z")
On Jun 5, 2007, at 9:05 AM, Sean C. wrote: > Your only option with page attachments for site-wide images is to > attach > them to the root page. The current method for finding attachments > is to > search the current page and then the parent pages recursively. > > Sean that’s a cool trick, but are the images available using the tag from within a layout with that method? ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/6 "2007-06-05T18:17:58Z")
Yes, they are. A layout is never rendered without an associated page, so all the tags within a layout refer to that page when applicable. Sean ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:41pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/7 "2007-06-05T18:41:04Z")
The scope of 0.7 has not changed, but we have a lot of enhancements yet to do to 0.6, IMO. One major thing is the discovery and installation of extensions, half of which I wrote at RailsConf. Asset management is an issue that I think everyone wants a different solution for. I primarily wanted to be able to put images in my blog posts and I liked the interface John had mocked up, so I emulated it with page\_attachments. Gallery takes a more asset-focused approach and makes it easy to display lots of images. It’s also pretty easy to roll-your-own. There’s power and flexibility in the diversity of approaches here, and I don’t think we’ve reached the ‘standardization’ stage. In fact, in some ways I hope we never reach that – it could mean a hugely bloated piece of software. And there are better software out there for asset management than any extension in Radiant could achieve. My $0.02. Sean ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/8 "2007-06-05T18:24:59Z")
What are the core plans for a new image manager? I have one I wrote, there is Sean’s and then the Gallery extension, but it seems like there should be some sort of official plugin. None these (mine for sure!) are really “ready for prime time” or all they all that they could be. This seems to be something that people need, the list has been flooded with questions in the last few weeks. What is the “killer feature” of 0.7 in any case. 0.6 was extensions, which have worked out very well and opened things up a lot, but where do we go from here? Are “blogging” features still the main focus? Keith B. Tel: +49-7731-79838380 removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [http://keithbingman.com](http://keithbingman.com) ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 3:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/9 "2007-06-06T03:17:38Z")
On 05/06/07 01:23 PM, Keith B. was heard to say: > What are the core plans for a new image manager? I have one I wrote, > there is Sean’s and then the Gallery extension, but it seems like > there should be some sort of official plugin. There is also the approach of abstracting the content and suddenly get a whole bunch of possible features: [http://init.ca/blog/2007/04/02/abstract-content-model-for-radiant/](http://init.ca/blog/2007/04/02/abstract-content-model-for-radiant/) Cheers, Oliver ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 4:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/10 "2007-06-06T04:15:52Z")
> What are the core plans for a new image manager? I have one I wrote, > there is Sean’s and then the Gallery extension, but it seems like > there should be some sort of official plugin. None these (mine for > sure!) are really “ready for prime time” or all they all that they > could be. This seems to be something that people need, the list has > been flooded with questions in the last few weeks. I’m currently quietly (and very very slowly) building an asset management plugin hoping to encompass the features in both my original asset manager and sean’s manager. I’ve downloaded your extension and the gallery extension, but have yet to look through those to figure out if there’s any more features that are missing. I’m hoping that I can come up with something that provides a core that everybody is happy with that. I’m not too worried about how it’s going to look in the view (I’ll probably make it look the same as my original extension), but if I can get the core of it right, changing how the view works can be up to debate and extensions. Features that I’m planning are: - Tests Loads and loads and loads of tests. I’m currently developing in in TDD style. This is the main reason why none of the other extensions can even be considered at the time being. - Primary Storage is in the db as blobs: For ease of backup and replication and making sure we can scale horizontally. This was a debated issue when we first started discussing asset management, but I’m 100% convinced that this is the right answer, mainly because all the real arguments against are handled by: - Serving through secondary storage: When pages are published or the assets of a published page are modified, the assets can be dumped either to the public dir, or possibly exported to s3 or another external location. The performance of radiant’s cache is good enough that this isn’t needed in the basic case, but for people who need a lot of performance from the assets, it needs to be there as an option. - Degraded installation. It will work out of the box with no dependencies, but some features might require dependencies. - Image manipulation My original extension allowed image manipulation using fleximage templates (to resize, add shadows, etc). I plan to have the same manipulations performed in a similar way to the way that tags are defined using a syntax similar to fleximage and degrading based on whether imagescience, rmagick or nothing is installed. The work is going slowly. Very very slowly, as I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to it, and because the features that I’m putting in aren’t handled by the usual suspects (attachment\_fu and acts\_as\_attachments) - I believe that CMS asset management needs a bit more than what they provide. Dan. ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 4:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/11 "2007-06-06T04:27:53Z")
Dan, I’m thrilled to see “image manipulation” as one of your planned features. Can I put in a specific request – acknowledging that, as you said, this is moving slowly? I’ve been hunting for a way to control thumbnail generation from within a gallery or asset management tool, and so far I haven’t found anything that quite fits my needs. What I’d like is to be able to upload an image for inclusion in a gallery, and either as part of the upload process, or afterwards, have the ability to crop the image to specify what portion to use for the thumbnail. I’ve found a number of Javascript cropping implementations, but I’m pretty new to Rails, and I’ve not been able to work out how I might put this to use in the context of Radiant. Here’s one: [http://www.defusion.org.uk/demos/060519/cropper.php](http://www.defusion.org.uk/demos/060519/cropper.php) …and an inkling of how it might be implemented in something like the Gallery Extension: [http://garbageburrito.com/blog/entry/135/javascript-image-cropping-](http://garbageburrito.com/blog/entry/135/javascript-image-cropping-) with-jscropperui-and-rails Thanks! \*DN ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 5:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/12 "2007-06-06T05:36:57Z")
My biggest gripe with most online photo management apps is that even if you have access to the server via FTP, you must individually select each file to upload. I can see Radiant excelling in this capacity with well designed rake tasks for whatever image extension takes the lead in this capacity. Has anyone written a rake task to do a bulk import from the local server filesystem into the Gallery Extension? I’m planning on developing one myself (and then making it public, of course) if no such task already exists. But as a novice Ruby/Rake user, I’d like to make sure I’m not repeating anyone else’s work. 🙂 -Matt ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 5:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/13 "2007-06-06T17:04:50Z")
On 6/5/07, Oliver B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Cheers, > Oliver I just glanced over this, and I think it looks awesome. I don’t think I understand all the design decisions, but it definitely add lots of flexibility to the system, so I +1 this. ---
**Author:** ![Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/76d3ee/32.png) [@Johan\_RSSSSnnblom](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Johan_RSSSSnnblom)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/images-again/105984/14 "2007-06-06T04:29:53Z")
Just to add: in the context of the broader discussion, I’d agree that Radiant needs a stable plugin for basic image handling. For my own needs, the Gallery Extension, with the cropping feature in my previous message, would cover most situations. \*DN