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Domvas

Overview

Domvas implements the missing piece that connects the DOM and Canvas. It gives to the ability to take arbitrary DOM content and paint it to a Canvas of your choice.

Usage

var canvas = document.getElementById("test");
var context = canvas.getContext('2d');

domvas.toImage(document.getElementById("dom"), function() {
    context.drawImage(this, 20, 20);
});

Syntax

domvas.toImage(domElement, readyCallback, width, height, left, top);

readyCallback's 'this' and first argument points to a valid, preloaded image node that you can simply draw to your canvas context.

How it works

Domvas uses a feature of SVG that allows you to embed XHTML content into the SVG – and as you might know, the actual SVG can be used as a data uri, and therefore behaves like a standard image.

I have written about this technique in 2008 when I brought CSS transforms to browsers that did not have them. It took a little more experimentation to transform it into a reusable plugin: HTML content needs to be serialized to XML, and all styles have to be inlined.

Caveats

Credits / License

©2012 Paul Bakaus. Licensed under MIT. Reach out on Twitter!