Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

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orgicus

Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

in Share your Work • 2 years ago

Hello,

At disturb media we've launched a site that we're pretty proud off, and would like to share it with you and get you opinions as well.

Aside from the actionscript development and nice little features like browser based geolocation, the site uses
Processing to run an application on the server for data visualization: a map illustrating the journeys of all
the people informing themselves and pledging to be more responsible regarding our planet.

Check it out here: http://myworld.panda.org/

We hope you like it, and if you deem it worthy for a vote (shameless plug) we'll be greateful : http://www.thefwa.com/submissions/the-world-is-where-you-live

Replies(4)

mbraendle

Re: Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

2 years ago

Excellent website!

Tell us a little more how you run Processing server-side.

allesblin..

Re: Re: Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

2 years ago

I would want to know that too.

orgicus

Re: Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

2 years ago

Thank you very much!

Personally, I had a very minor contribution helping Max with some basic vector math for the curves, but Max put the whole thing together in the end and he can tell you more about this. He will follow shortly with the requested details.

maxnov

Re: Site using Processing on the back end for visualization

2 years ago

Hello,

orgicus just let me know about this thread because I am the guy that created the Processing app.

Due to the way Processing is put together, it's pretty tricky to get it running without a GUI. So if you have a server somewhere running 'whatever-linux-distro' Server without a GUI and want to get Processing running on that, then I'm not even sure if you will be able to. Because of this limitation, we had to run the render script on our G5 server which has OS X installed.

All we needed was one image every hour or so to use in the site. But if you wanted something complex like a video, this would still be possible.

Firstly, your Processing app needs to be able to open, do whatever it needs to do and then close itself using exit(); So if you want to output a video, then your processing sketch would, when opened, generate and save the video and then close itself. The same for image(s), when you run your sketch, it will save out the images and then close.

Then, export your Processing project as an application (File>Export Application).

What we then did to run it every hour was to create a CRON job to run this exported Processing app using Python.

In python the command to open an application (on OS X) and have it wait until it has quit is this:

PATH_TO_YOUR_APP = "/etc/etc/processing.app"
command = "open -W -g -a " + PATH_TO_YOUR_APP
# Run the open command
process = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
process.wait()
# Do what you want with the output

Then we optimise the output image, and upload it to another server where it is used in the Flash project that you see online.

This is by no means actually running Processing on a server like running a PHP script for example but we wanted to use Processing to generate the map for various reasons (looks, CPU, load times, detail) and this was the best way we could think of to do so. It's been working nicely and I think it's a cool integration of Flash and Processing!

Let me know if you need any more clarity on anything.

Also, as orgicus said, please help us out and vote for the site ( http://www.thefwa.com/submissions/the-world-is-where-you-live) if you liked it.

Thanks!

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