morsecodemedia

Thanks Craig for your response. I actually don't want it to managed by a button on the field itself, that is just the functionality it has now, because it was the easiest and first thing I figured out how to do. I do have a method called generateSprite() that does most of that, except it's hooked into the wrong thing and isn't taking advance of the API as you mentioned above. As for the configurations, it's more so users can determine the size of images, output location, nomenclature for the CSS that is outputted, etc. And I agree with you about considering how and why I want sprites to be made. I can assume that a large percentage of the time, users will probably not need/want this module to create sprite sheets for normal layout purposes. How this module came to be is that I am working on a site where the client wants a slider of images that build a collage. The slider has grid-like slides, where each slide is a 5x3 grid made up of 15 images. The images represent employees that work for that company. If there were 15 employees contributing a minimum of 5 photos each, that would be 75 images, or more importantly, 75 HTTP requests, just to build a 5 slide carousel. If the company and/or the amount of images per employee grew, so would the HTTP requests. So it made sense to me to take all those images and create a sprite sheet and which I can then just use one image to build out the carousel instead of 75.

Thank you for clarifying that for me. After reading your response I found a post from 2011, talking about extending the image field and Ryan provided some code the explain how to do that ( reinforcing what you have said ). For anyone who is looking to do something similar the article can be found here.

Hello, My Goal: To create a custom module that will take an array of images and generate a sprite sheet, as well as, the CSS to access each sprite. (This part I have completed ). To have it be a custom InputType, so that every image field does not create a sprite sheet. (Still needs to be completed). To create an admin page for the module to allow you to customize the output, size, etc. (Still needs to be completed). My Problems: Currently, it is looking at a specific folder that is hardcoded in the module, and creating a sprite sheet from those images. I suspect that creating a custom InputType would allow me to have the folder dynamically set based on the page that is using the module. I am struggling on finding the proper documentation that would allow me to do that. I also, have created a "Create Sprite Sheet" button and have it hooked after the page save button... on every page, even if there isn't an image upload on that page .I would like the create sprite sheet functionality to be hooked to the actual page save button only on the pages that have the custom InputType that needs to be created - mentioned above. I'd appreciate any help/direction provided, to help me achieve my goals. Also, if anyone has any recommended features that they think would be helpful as a part of this module, please feel free to make suggestions. Thanks in advance.