Rotating around an arbitrary point: HTML5 Canvas

Question

Come see the amazing disappearing rectangle!

But seriously I have a really simple HTML5 canvas that just draws a rectangle(using lineTo instead of rect for a reason).

My Problem: I am attempting to rotate the rectangle 90 degrees. The rectangle should be rotated 90 degrees but instead it disappears.

In my webapp project I am getting weird x,y placement errors when I rotate my complex polygons in HTML5 canvas', so I have created this simple HTML to test rotation & ensure its rotating around its x,y point of 100,100. But even this has weird results when I attempt to rotate a shape.

Can anyone tell me how to get my rectangle visible & how I can rotate my polygons around a specific point without them completely changing x,y values.

Has anyone experienced this issue with HTML5 canvas' & know solutions to fix this?

<canvas id="testCanvas" width="900px" height="900px" style="background-color: blue;">

</canvas>
<script type="text/javascript">

    var canvas = document.getElementById("testCanvas");
    var dc     = canvas.getContext("2d");

    dc.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);

    dc.save();
    dc.fillStyle = "#FF0000";

    dc.rotate( 90*Math.PI/180 );  // rotate 90 degrees
    dc.beginPath();
    dc.moveTo(100, 100);
    dc.lineTo(200, 100);
    dc.lineTo(200,300);
    dc.lineTo(100,300);
    dc.closePath();
    dc.fill();

    dc.restore();
-->
</script>

Answer 1

To rotate around a point you need to do 3 steps.

• First translate the context to the center you wish to rotate around.
• Then do the actual rotation.
• Then translate the context back.

Like this:

var canvas = document.getElementById("testCanvas");
var dc     = canvas.getContext("2d");
var angle = 0;
window.setInterval(function(){
    angle = (angle + 1) % 360;
    dc.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);

    dc.save();
    dc.fillStyle = "#FF0000";

    dc.translate(150,200); // First translate the context to the center you wish to rotate around.
    dc.rotate( angle*Math.PI/180 ); // Then do the actual rotation.
    dc.translate(-150,-200); // Then translate the context back.

    dc.beginPath();
    dc.moveTo(100, 100);
    dc.lineTo(200, 100);
    dc.lineTo(200,300);
    dc.lineTo(100,300);
    dc.closePath();
    dc.fill();

    dc.restore();
}, 5);

Answer 2

When you rotate the canvas, it rotates from the origin (0, 0), so your rectangle ends up getting rotated off the screen.

See this example where it's only rotated 45 deg: http://jsfiddle.net/wjLSm/

One way to fix this is to translate the canvas by its width & height/2: http://jsfiddle.net/wjLSm/1/ (then 0,0 is at the middle -- be aware of this)