I’ve written a few posts about canvas-based animation and graphics libraries lately. Before moving on to another topic I thought I’d mention Doodle.js, which is a sprite-based canvas library. Doodle.js simplifies working with the canvas, and includes excanvas for IE support.

Code using Doodle.js looks like this:

(function(oo) {
 oo.canvas('#my_canvas');
 var box = oo.rect({x:25, y:25,
                    width:50, height:50, fill:"#ff0000"});
 box.draw(); //draw a red box with initial parameters
 
 box.modify({fill:'rgb(0,255,0)'}).translate(50,0).draw();
 box.modify({fill:'purple'}).rotate(-45).draw();
 box.modify({fill:'yellow'}).translate(50,0).scale(1.5).draw();
 box.modify({fill:'blue'}).transform(1.5,0,0,1.5,50,0).draw();
 
})($doodle);

As you can see, the API is fairly clean. There isn’t currently much documentation, but the author has written a length blog post with examples.

While Processing.js is a full drawing and animation system, and Raphael is a vector graphics library, Doodle.js provides a simple way of working with sprites.

Our recent post about Processing.js made me think about Conway’s Game of Life. If you haven’t come across it before, it’s a simulation that works like this:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation.
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell.

I like to use this algorithm to experiment with new graphics libraries, so I had my own Processing version from back in 2005. I’ve ported it to Processing.js here conway-js.

I’ve also found lots of interesting pure JavaScript implementations. ConwayJS by Joseph Robert is my favourite. It’s pretty fast and allows you to draw cells with the mouse.

Another interesting one is game_of_life by sukhchander.

I’ve uploaded my Processing.js examples to DailyJS so you can see them without checking out the git repositories:

• fire.js
• conway-js

After yesterday’s Processing.js article I discovered this post about creating a particle system with JavaScript and a canvas: Parcycle: A Particle System with HTML5 canvas.

You can view the effect in action in this demo: Parcycle

I found the use of globalCompositeOperation very interesting in this code. It allowed the author to make particles appear lighter when they overlap by using a drawing mode rather than detecting the colour on the canvas.

Processing.js is a JavaScript/HTML canvas port of Processing. Processing provides a toolkit for programming images, animation and even games. It’s hosted in Java and provides its own mini-IDE. Processing.js can interpret Processing projects, but runs them in a browser that supports canvas.

If you’re familiar with Processing already you should be able to run some of your projects in Processing.js. Just create a simple HTML page with a canvas and include processing.js. The examples/ folder in the source distribution demonstrates how to do this using a script called init.js — this finds the canvas on the page and instantiates a processing object:

Processing(canvas, scripts[i].text);

Processing.js allows you to embed Processing scripts into HTML like this:

<script type="application/processing">
</script>

Calling Processing from JavaScript

If you’re new to Processing but have a lot of JavaScript you want to reuse, you can safely call Processing from your JavaScript code. I’ve prepared an example project, fire.js which demonstrates one way of mixing JavaScript and Processing. You can pass the current Processing environment to a JavaScript class like this:

void draw() {
  fire.update(this);
}

Keeping some level of separation between JavaScript code and “pure” Processing seems like a good way to avoid confusion if you ever port to another Processing platform.

Processing Basics

Every Processing project has setup() and draw() functions. In this case I’ve instantiated a Fire object and I’m passing this which is the current Processing object. Then I can access Processing’s functions from within my JavaScript class.

The Processing reference gives example code for all of the Processing functions. There’s a lot of drawing primitives like rect() and ellipse() — playing around with these is a good way to learn Processing.

Related Projects

ruby-processing is a Ruby port. It differs to Processing.js because it provides a Ruby-style version of the Processing API. Even CamelCase method names have been changed to underscores.

Although Processing.js and Processing are awesome projects, if you just want to draw vector graphics you’d be better off with something like Raphael. Processing is more suited to animated visualisations or interactive projects.

Node.js makes writing IRC-related programs straightforward and super-efficient, thanks to its evented networking. Therefore it isn’t surprising that a lot of projects have appeared already.

I’ve been looking around for reusable JavaScript IRC libraries, and discovered the following projects.

IRC Daemon Demo

This IRC daemon demo presented at jsconf.eu/2009 demonstrates how to build a server. It has simple prototypal classes for channels and users, and parses IRC commands using a regex and a switch. It also uses node’s TCP library.

nodelog

nodelog is an IRC logger. This would be a good place to start if you’d like to build a JavaScript IRC bot. The client code is clear and reusable. The log.js file demonstrates how to use the irc.js library.

irccat-nodejs

irccat-nodejs is based on irccat which allows you to send messages to IRC using HTTP or a TCP socket. The client code is again fairly simple.

egret

egret is a command-line IRC client. The base code uses node’s TCP sockets and a hash to interpret IRC commands into English.

nodejs.irc

nodejs.irc is an IRC bot. It’s not finished yet, but the code is separated out and easy to follow.

aoibot

aoibot is similar to nodejs.irc, but it looks like the finished product will be less generic. Again, it’s unfinished, so I expect the author still has a lot of ideas and work to do.