NAME

Acme::Odometer - Create graphical web counters

VERSION

version 0.0.2

SYNOPSIS

    # write the image to a file for your viewing pleasure
    use Acme::Odometer;
    use File::Slurp qw( write_file );

    my $odometer = Acme::Odometer->new(
        asset_path     => 'path/to/digit/files',
        file_extension => 'png',
    );

    my $image = $odometer->image( '000123456789' );

    # write as a GIF
    write_file( "counter.gif", $image->gif );

    # write as a PNG
    write_file( "counter.png", $image->png );


    # or (for example) in a Dancer app
    # place an odometer graphic at /counter?count=12345
    # in real life, you'll want to validate etc before creating the graphic

    get '/counter' => sub {
        header( 'Content-Type' => 'image/png' );
        my $odometer = Acme::Odometer->new(
            asset_path     => 'path/to/digit/files',
            file_extension => 'png',
        );
        $odometer->image( params->{count} )->png;
    };

DESCRIPTION

This is a BETA release. The interface is still subject to change.

Acme::Odometer makes it easy to produce graphical web counters. You know, those odometer style thingies you used to see on a lot of geocities pages? This module takes a bunch of images of different digits, strings them together and passes them back to you as a GD::Image object.

CONSTRUCTOR AND STARTUP

new()

Creates and returns a new Acme::Odometer object. The following parameters can be passed to new().

• asset_path => "/path/to/odometer/files"

  The path to your asset folder. The asset folder will contain 0..9 image files of equal width, named 0.gif, 1.gif, 2.gif, 3.gif etc. The images can be in any format which GD can read. This parameter is required.

• file_extension => 'png'

  The extension of the files in your asset directory: "gif", "GIF", "png", "jpg", "jpeg", etc. This module makes no assumptions about what is or is not a valid extension. This parameter is optional and defaults to "gif".

      my $odometer = Acme::Odometer->new(
          asset_path     => 'path/to/digit/files',
          file_extension => 'png',
      );

image

Returns a GD::Image object, which you can use to print your image

    my $odometer = Acme::Odometer->new(
        asset_path     => 'path/to/digit/files',
        file_extension => 'png',
    );

    binmode STDOUT;
    print $odometer->image->png;

RESOURCES

All you need to get started is the images, which should consist of the digits 0-9, all in the same file format and all of equal width. For example, see http://digitmania.birdbrain.net/ for a bunch of insanely retro counter graphics. Or, see the assets folder of this distribution for a basic odometer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It's hard to trace the history of a lot of web counter graphics which have been circulated as they seem to originate in the Wild West of the internet. The images bundled with this dist appear to have been created by Heini Withagen, but this is hard to verify since the original page 404s now and also 404s in the earliest wayback machine snapshot (1999). Original link found at http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/spider/q6e192/cgi/COUNTER.HTM.

AUTHOR

Olaf Alders <olaf@wundercounter.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2013 by Olaf Alders.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.