Cadigan

Cadigan is a web API that serves placeholder .PNG images for designing and prototyping web applications.

Features

Fast placeholder PNG images
Custom size, colour and placeholder text

Upcoming Features

Custom font size and family
New background shapes, such as ellipses and rounded rectangles
A choice of image formats (JPEG, GIF, SVG)

Getting Started

If you are using a public instance of Cadigan, jump straight to step 3, Using Cadigan.

1. Prerequisites

Node.js - Version 10.x or higher
Git

2. Installation

Clone this repository using Git
Start the server with npm start
Verify that the server is running with the message Listening on <port>.

3. Using Cadigan

Wherever you need an image, and can include one by URL (such as an HTML img tag or CSS url(...)), you can point to Cadigan to use a custom placeholder image.

The image URI consists of the domain name, followed by any of the following parameters. Any parameter may be omitted, but each must be specified in the correct order.

size - If a square image is required, a single integer should be passed between, 30 and 512, specifying the side length, in pixels, of the square. For a rectangular image, two integers within the same range should be provided, separated by the letter 'x', e.g. 128x256, indicating the width and height of the image in pixels. Defaults to 128x128.
text - An arbitrary string of text to render in the image. If the text is too long to fit in the image, it will wrap on to a new line. Defults to placeholder.
background colour - A solid colour to fill the background of the image. A hexidecimal RGB colour code, either 3 or 6 hex digits. Defaults to #969696.
text colour - The colour of the text of the image. A hexidecimal RGB colour code, either 3 or 6 hex digits. Defaults to 30% opacity black, darkening the background colour.