Rendering text as an image using a django template tag

This templatetag allows you to use pil (python image library) to render out text in a custom font and colour. I recently created this template tag for a project I am working on, I haven't seen anything similar so I thought I would share it.

Here is the code for the templatetag:

    from django.conf import settings
    from django.template import Library, Node

    import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
    from os import chdir, path



    register = Library()



    def txt2img(text,bg="#ffffff",fg="#000000",font="GOTHIC.TTF",FontSize=14):
        font_dir = settings.MEDIA_ROOT+"/txt2img/"   # Set the directory to store the images
        img_name = text+"-"+bg.strip("#")+"-"+fg.strip("#")+".jpg" # Remove hashes
        if path.exists(font_dir+img_name): # Make sure img doesn't exist already
            pass
        else:   
            font_size = FontSize
            fnt = ImageFont.truetype(font_dir+font, font_size)
            w, h= fnt.getsize(text)
            img = Image.new('RGBA', (w, h), bg)
            draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
            draw.fontmode = "0" 
            draw.text((0,0), text, font=fnt, fill=fg)
            img.save(font_dir+img_name,"JPEG",quality=100)  
        imgtag = '<img src="'+settings.MEDIA_URL+'txt2img/'+img_name+'" alt="'+text+'" />'
        return imgtag



    register.simple_tag(txt2img)

Now you need to create the "txt2img" folder in your media folder and in it place the font or fonts you intend to use.

Now in your template, load the templatetag:

    {% load txt2img %}

You may now call the tag like so:

    {% txt2img "Some Text" "#faf9f4" "#f1a096" "TrajanPro-Regular.otf" 22 %}

Thats text,background colour, foreground colour, font name and font size. Text can be a "string" or a template variable (page.title). The plugin will create the image once only if it finds it wasn't already created.

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