asciist

a toy service to turn images into ASCII art

Usage

Install

asciist is a Go package, and installation is simple with the Go toolchain:

go install github.com/enaeseth/asciist

Run

For detailed usage information, run asciist help.

Service

To start the asciist service, run asciist serve:

usage: asciist serve [<flags>]

Run the service

Flags:
  --debug       Use debugging mode
  --host=HOST   Interface to listen on
  --port=27244  Port to listen on

Client

Once the service is running, you can use the built-in client to convert images with asciist convert. convert accepts a file to convert as an argument, or reads the image from stdin if no argument is provided.

By default, convert will output ASCII art that is the same width as your terminal. You can use a specific width with the -w/--width option.

$ curl -sL https://git.io/vyKUO | asciist convert -w 20
+++****####%%%@@@@@@
==++++***####%%%%@@@
====++++***####%%%%@
--====++++***####%%%
:---====++++***####%
:::---====++++***###
.::::---====++++***#
...::::---====++++**
 ....::::---====++++
    ...::::---====++

Testing

To convert an image to ASCII art locally (without using the service), run asciist test instead of convert.

Unit Tests

asciist includes tests for its image conversion and service packages, and they can be run with go test ./...:

$ (cd "$GOPATH/src/github.com/enaeseth/asciist" && go test ./...)
?   github.com/enaeseth/asciist            [no test files]
?   github.com/enaeseth/asciist/client     [no test files]
ok  github.com/enaeseth/asciist/convert    0.043s
?   github.com/enaeseth/asciist/fixture    [no test files]
ok  github.com/enaeseth/asciist/service    0.062s

Protocol

asciist accepts POST requests to the root URL (/). It expects JSON requests and produces JSON responses.

Request

{
  "width": 80,
  "image": "[base64-encoded image file]"
}

Response

200 OK

{
  "art": "[ASCII art, no trailing newline]"
}

400 Bad Request

{
  "error": "[brief error message]"
}

Notes

Dependencies

asciist depends on these third-party Go packages:

gin

Gin is a fast and popular HTTP framework for Go with excellent test coverage and a stable API.

nfnt/resize

A simple, stable, popular pure-Go library for performing image resizing.

mattn/go-isatty

A small cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris) library for determining whether stdout is a terminal.