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I am having trouble creating images with just data:

(web-http-get (lambda (con hdr data) (setq nic-profile-img-data data)) :url "http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/494606908385288192/Vq16xxxu_normal.jpeg")

downloads an image from Twitter (yes, I'm writing a Twitter tool).

When I do this:

 (insert-image (create-image nic-profile-img-data 'jpeg))

I just get a blank square.

When I do this however:

(insert-image (progn (with-temp-file "/tmp/nic.jpg" (insert nic-profile-img-data)) (create-image "/tmp/nic.jpg" 'jpeg)))

I get a nice picture of a really good looking Englishman.

I don't understand the difference here. I thought it might be encoding of the image data somehow, so I tried all sorts of different decoding and encoding (who understands that stuff in Emacs anyway?), but none of it made any difference.

The create-image with data stuff seems fairly new, and most code I've found uses files. I can use files, but it's an extra layer I didn't want.

How might this work and what, if anything I'm doing wrong?

Platform: Emacs 24-4 on GNU/Linux.

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  • Are you simply missing the DATA-P argument to create-image? Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 12:44
  • @phils I tried that, but it's still a blank square. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 12:46
  • FWIW, if I load a jpeg into a buffer and then store its (buffer-string) to a variable and use (insert-image (create-image nic-profile-img-data 'jpeg t)), it works as expected. Maybe try that and then, if successful, try to ascertain the difference between the working and non-working data. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 12:55
  • this doesn't work either: (insert-image (create-image (with-temp-buffer (insert nic-profile-img-data) (buffer-string)) nic-profile-img-data 'jpeg t)) Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:12
  • 1
    GOT IT! :) posting an answer Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:33

2 Answers 2

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First of all: Use the third argument.

Both data and file are represented by a string, you need to tell create-image which one you're using. If you don't tell it, it defaults to file, which is why your data version wasn't working.

 (insert-image (create-image nic-profile-img-data 'jpeg t))

The third argument, when non-nil, specifies that the first argument is a data string instead of a filename.

Secondly: Use Unibyte

Even when doing the above, I still get a blank square. The reason is that the string you get from web-http-get is multibyte, and insert-image needs an unibyte string.

Here's one way to solve that:

(insert-image (create-image (string-as-unibyte nic-profile-img-data) 'jpeg t))

As for an example package which uses create-image from a data string, see the nethack-tiles.el file in nethack-el.

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  • I'm still getting the blank square. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 12:16
  • @Dan Try it again :) Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:36
  • Works for me! I'm gonna paste my rubbish solution to this using files. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:37
  • you would have thought that decoding to raw-text-unix would have done that. Good ole MULE. It did for Erik and it still haunts us now. Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 13:41
  • Maybe report-emacs-bug to get a comment about unibyte data added to the documentation? On the one hand it seems obvious, but on the other it's (obviously) sufficiently easy to get wrong that a mention probably wouldn't be amiss. Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 3:07
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Here's how to do it with files and a lot of crazy depends:

(insert-image (match-let* (((alist 'content-md5 md5) nic-image-meta) ((list* filename dir) (reverse (split-string md5 "/"))) (directory (cons "/tmp/twaddle-avatars/" (reverse dir))) (dirpath (s-join "/" directory)) (filepath (expand-file-name filename dirpath))) (unless (file-exists-p filepath) (make-directory dirpath t) (let ((coding-system-for-write 'raw-text)) (with-temp-file filepath (insert nic-profile-img-data)))) (create-image filepath'jpeg)))

This requires shadchen and dash at least.

I post it because it shows how to handle saving the file where you have the meta-data. The twitter meta-data for the file is:

(setq nic-image-meta '((x-content-type-options . "nosniff") (expires . "Mon, 17 Nov 2014 03:55:30 GMT") (x-cache-hits . "1") (x-cache . "HIT") (x-served-by . "cache-tw-lon2-cr1-5-TWLON2") (connection . "keep-alive") (age . "250298") (via . "1.1 varnish") (date . "Sun, 02 Nov 2014 03:55:30 GMT") (accept-ranges . "bytes") (content-length . "1731") (x-ton-expected-size . "1731") (server . "tfe") (last-modified . "Mon, 29 Sep 2014 04:37:52 GMT") (etag . "\"CmzKxLI/Fm2pvQV04q6cZA==\"") (content-type . "image/jpeg") (content-md5 . "CmzKxLI/Fm2pvQV04q6cZA==") (status-string . "OK") (status-code . "200") (status-version . "1.1")))

Dealing with the filename as a function of the md5 seems like a good idea and results in a very distributed storage across directories (which is good).

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