Now that I have proven that GrahicsBuilder is an option for creating webby buttons and that it can also render to offscreen images the next logic step would be to cook up a Grails plugin to serve custom-made on-the-fly images.
Well the wait is over, version 0.1 of the J2D Plugin has been released. It is quite small in terms of code yet powerful, as it adds a new method to all Controller classes:
renderImage, capable of rendering an offscreen image.The following features are already in the roadmap for the next versions
- cache images either in memory or in files
- SVG (and probably SWF) output via SVGRenderer
- Java 1.4+ support instead of just 1.6+
- image transparency
- output animated gifs and pngs
Keep on Groovying!
