placeany/README.md

# Placeany

A quick and simple service for getting pictures of whatever-you-want
for use as placeholders in your designs or code. Just put your image
size (width & height) after the URL and you'll get a placeholder.

There is also a bookmarklet service which enhances sites with many images.

Inspirations:

- https://web.archive.org/web/20110504042732/http://placekitten.com/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120223050454/http://www.heyben.com/horse_ebookmarklet/.

## Example calls

Generates an image, 200px wide and 300px tall:  
http://localhost:8080/200/300

Generates an image in grayscale, 200px wide and 300px tall:  
http://localhost:8080/g/200/300

## Installation

First, create an image collection.

1. Create the directory `./images`.
1. Get some images, from [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com) or similar.
1. Place images in image directory.

### Run as local web server

1. Go to the code: `cd path/to/holder`. Copy `images` folder to it.
1. Create and activate a virtualenv.
1. Get dependencies in place: `pip install -r requirements.txt`
1. Start the app: `waitress-serve wsgi:app`
1. Go to [http://localhost:8080](http://localhost:8080) in your web browser.
1. Done!

### Run as Container

The most easy and portable way to use this is to use Docker or Podman.
In this build, waitress is used for production readyness.

    podman build .
    podman run -it -p 8080:8080 -v ./images:/app/images <container id>

If you wish to embed images in container as well, use alternate
Containerfile.

    podman build -f Containerfile.aio --build-arg images=./images .
    podman run -it -p 8080:8080 <container id>

### Run behind reverse proxy

A reverse proxy in front of placeany is recommended. An example
Caddyfile is available to make https "just work", but Nginx+certbot
will be equally fine.

## Podman tip: generate systemd files

Make sure to enable lingering user processes.

    loginctl enable-linger $USER

Then, create and change directory to systemd.

    mkdir -p .config/systemd/user
    cd .config/systemd/user

Now, generate the systemd user service.

    podman generate systemd --new -f -n placeany

Your container can now be enabled and started.