Ideas for more universal workflows?

[radiospiel]

I would like to see something which allows the user to construct workflows, and which allows the application to define possible workflow steps in an easy to use syntax.

A workflow could be something like:

• fetch (GIF) image from URL
• extract frame NNN from image
• apply mask
• crop & zoom to fit
• convert to JPG

which, as an URL, could probably look like this:

http://<server>/jpg/70/fit/100x200/mask/frame/12/http://<src-url>

Any thoughts on this?

[Overbryd]

Hy,

I think that the experience consuming a GET based API is cool for simple sharing and opening a link. But if there is need for workflows, I think a POST API with JSON formatted instruction would fit better. My primary reason is simply because I imagine a better user experience. I think putting together a long string for a GET request is harder than having a nice JS that allows structured options and talks to the POST endpoint.

That would mean a little bit more work on the imgio side, including a jQuery lib, but the overall experience would benefit from that extra work.

Markup-wise:

<img data-src="http://lolcats.org/big-cutie.tiff" data-imgio="fit-50x50 rotate-90" />

[radiospiel]

With respect to how hard it is to write a workflow definition you are probably right.

The bad thing with POSTing is mainly that then request caching would stop working, and caching stuff is one of the main things why I like to do this. As the result of a workflow probably never changes this would put unnecessary load onto the server.

However, a JS library could still take care of that, and format the URL strings accordingly. URLs - and workflow definitions - would still be limited in length, though. AFAIK there is no minimal maximum URL length defined anywhere, but most browsers do support 1 or 4k characters or so.

What we could do, of course, is to POST a workflow definition, which then returns a workflow-id, and then use that id to run the workflow. But this sounds awfully like what transloadit is doing already?

[radiospiel]

Another thing regarding the markup as you suggested: one could even do CSS based on that, which sounds awesome; like

img[data-imgio*="50x50"] {
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
}

This is definitely good stuff.

[radiospiel]

Just back from implementing a GET-based universal workflow, will push in a minute. A POST-based workflow definition and a potential jQuery plugin to help with creating proper URLs is probably something belonging to #6