How do you crop an image with carrierwave 'after the fact' in rails?

Question

What I'd like to do is upload an image, then take the user to a new page where I will use Jcrop to let the user select the part of the image they want to crop, and then store that image. Essentially, I want to make it a 2-stage process.

I know how to do the javascript part, and I understand the basic flow of how to create this functionality. However, I am not aware of the carrierwave specifics on how to accomplish this.

The closest thing I can find is:

image.recreate_versions!

But I still can't pass in the height/width and starting x,y to crop it.

For example, how can I tell carrierwave to do the cropping 'after the fact' - i.e. not when the image is uploaded for the first time? I see methods to "process" the image, but they happen automatically with fixed Height and Width. How can I delay this?

Essentially, what I'd like to do is define a version dynamically, where I can specify the height and width and x,y

Thanks

Answer 1

This is the best I can do. There's probably an easier way to do it, but this is my hack:

Here is my 'POST' controller action when the cropping info is passed:

  def update_crop
    @user = User.find(current_user.id)
    @user.crop(params[:x].to_i, params[:y].to_i, params[:h].to_i, params[:w].to_i)

    redirect_to(profile_path, :notice => 'Your profile and avatar was successfully updated.')
  end

Here is the method to add to the User model that contains an "avatar" image uploader:

  def crop(x, y, h, w)
    image = Magick::ImageList.new(avatar.current_path)
    cropped_image = image.crop(x, y, h, w)
    cropped_image.write(avatar.current_path)

    avatar.recreate_versions!
  end

Basically this just hi-jacks the current one, overwrites it, and then tells Carrierwave to create