909648 - Collections API for PUTing images should not require encoded parameter

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Marketplace Graveyard :: API, defect, P3)

Description

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

JSON encoding the body or URL encoding the body is expensive (especially if the image is more than a few hundred KB, which is almost a certainty for desktop-resolution images).

Rather than requiring an "image" parameter, the API should simply accept the image as the request body (as a base64 string). This will eliminate garbage on the client and conceivably improve performance on the server as well (one fewer large decode operation to perform).

Comment 1

[Allen Short [:ashort]]

Glad you see it my way. Somebody should've said something on the original bug. :)

Comment 2

[Allen Short [:ashort]]

The simplest thing seems to be just allowing a PUT of image/* data with no encoding. My understanding of file upload and XHR is that this isn't significantly harder to deal with from JS. Thoughts?

Comment 3

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

It's actually a bit of a pain in the ass without encoding because it requires raw access to the XHR, which our requests library doesn't give us out-of-the-box.

Also, if we are going to do live preview/edit like mmaslaney talked about, we'll be doing it from a <canvas>, which means it will be significantly easier to get a data URI than it will be to twiddle an XHR to upload a raw file object.

Comment 4

[Allen Short [:ashort]]

then I'm not sure what this bug is about, since PUT to image/ expects a data URI right now.

Comment 5

[Matt Basta [:basta]]

Right now, according to the docs, the API expects something that looks like this:

    {"image":"data:image/png;base64,..."}

when it should accept simply:

    data:image/png;base64,...

There's no sense in putting it in a parameter.

Comment 6

[Allen Short [:ashort]]

Aha. Got it.

Comment 7

[Allen Short [:ashort]]

https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/commit/2276eeb74