[nodebb-plugin-imgbed] Image Embedding with only a URL

julian

Nice plugin @BDHarrington7!

Chris

Nice plugin. One suggestion I'd make is that if someone posts a hotlink to an image that it either downloads it to the forum first, then displays the image, or if an Imgur api key is active it sends it to imgur then links it from there.

The only reason I suggest this is so often on so many forums old historical images that were hotlinked are deleted or no longer accessible. Would be nice to preserve information including images wherever possible.

Nice work though.

julian

Ah yeah, I agree! Github does the same. Our readme has imgur links, but when Github parses it, it autouploads it to their own CDN.

Bri

That was one of the future goals I had for this plugin, actually

@Julian could you point me in the right direction for interfacing with the upload functionality of the forum?

Also on another note, I noticed that the composition window has a message at the bottom saying to "Upload images by dragging and dropping them", but I don't see that in my version (0.2.1) of NodeBB, is that a plugin?

julian

Ah, that functionality is available when you associate your imgur client ID with NodeBB. Otherwise the feature is disabled -- as should that message!

<baris>

That message only shows up when you enter a imgur client ID in the admin/settings section.

Bri

I know I have access to this __default variable within the plugin, but that only gives me access to the root directory of the plugin. Is there a way to get to the actual uploads directory from a plugin?

julian

@bdharrington7, try this:

var nconf = module.parent.require('nconf'),
    uploadPath = nconf.get('upload_path'),    // this
    absolutePath = path.join(nconf.get('base_dir'), nconf.get('upload_path');    // or alternatively, this

Bri

@julian Thanks!

Now I'm seeing some weird behavior, I'm requiring the spawn child_process now, and calling curl, but when I load the forum (or when supervisor reloads it), it crashes 3-4 times before staying alive, and it's these kind of error messages:

NodeBB/src/webserver.js:376
		var footer = templates.footer.parse({
		                              ^
TypeError: Cannot call method 'parse' of undefined
at module.exports.init.translator.translate.templates.logout (~/NodeBB/src/webserver.js:376:34)
at Object.Plugins.fireHook (~/NodeBB/src/plugins.js:256:5)
at module.exports.init (~/NodeBB/src/webserver.js:375:11)
at Object.templates.ready (~/NodeBB/public/src/templates.js:47:5)
at EventEmitter.nconf.file.file (~/NodeBB/app.js:124:18)
at EventEmitter.g (events.js:185:14)
at EventEmitter.emit (events.js:115:20)
at Plugins.init (~/NodeBB/src/plugins.js:42:23)
at Plugins.reload (~/NodeBB/src/plugins.js:89:5)
at async.iterator.fn (~/NodeBB/node_modules/async/lib/async.js:579:34)

DEBUG: Program node app exited with code 1

<baris>

Can you post the code that causes the crash?

Bri

Sure, here's the code snippet, from my library.js:

fs.exists(fullWgetPath, function(exist){ 
    if (!exist){
        console.log ("File not found for " + fullRelPath);   // seeing weird behavior here, crashes a few times and then loads??
        var file = fs.createWriteStream( fullWgetPath );
        var curl = spawn('curl', [rawUrl]);
        curl.stdout.on('data', function(data) { file.write(data); });
        curl.stdout.on('end', function(data) {
            file.end();
            console.log("File downloaded! " + rawUrl);
        });
        curl.on('exit', function(code) {
            if (code != 0) {
                console.log('Failed: ' + code);
            }
        });
        // var wget = "wget " + rawUrl + " -O " + fullWgetPath;
        // var child = exec(wget, function (err, stdout, stderr){
        //     if (err){
        //         console.log(constants.name + ": Error wget-ing " + rawUrl);
        //         console.log(err);
        //     }
        //     else {
        //         console.log(constants.name + ": Successfully downloaded " + rawUrl + stdout);
        //     }
        // });
    }
    else {
        console.log("file exists: " + fullWgetPath);
    }
});

Bri

I've made a few improvements to the plugin, including allowing custom extensions to be specified, and uploading to the server when an image is linked. I had some issues when in the downloading case: The post would be parsed, and the local url would be returned, but it was before the file was actually downloaded, so the image would show up as broken when you post an image. The way I resolved it was using the websockets, and signaling the client when the file was finished downloading.

I welcome any comments or concerns about the code, especially before I publish it to npm. I do still have a few more ideas for this plugin (progress bar, maybe making an option where the conversion to a local url can be made permanent, imgur uploading)... I remember that @psychobunny mentioned incorporating a CDN but that sounds like something for a separate plugin, to handle all other types of uploads.

Chris

@BDHarrington7 excited for the downloading linked images. If an imgur api is specified does it move it over to imgur?

Bri

@Chris Not yet, soon!

Bri

@baris I did find the problem, it was stupid. I was staying up too late when I introduced the bug that caused the crash.

Bri

Also, is there a global debug flag that you can reference on the server side?

julian

@BDHarrington7 -- start nodebb using ./nodebb dev. This will set the NODE_ENV environment variable to "development"

Scuzz

Isn't this possible with markdown anyway?

Schamper

@Scuzz said:

Isn't this possible with markdown anyway?

Ye, you should be able to embed an image using ![alt](link)
Like so:
Much stylish

Bri

Right, and the advantage that the markdown has is that the link doesn't need to have a specific format of matching the pattern of http*jpg|gif|png etc. I could change it to parse looking for img tags, and downloading those URLs