.. Vulcan documentation master file, created by
   sphinx-quickstart on Fri Jun  5 16:33:53 2015.
   You can adapt this file completely to your liking, but it should at least
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Vulcan
======

Vulcan is an image processing API which retrieves an image from an arbitrary backend store and
applies various image transformations on-the-fly.

Interaction with Vulcan is done via a designated CDN url, usually specific to the API or brand interacting with Vulcan.

Transformations are specified in both the URL for the image, and, in the case of a Copilot API, on
the photo entity itself, within the API.

During processing, images go through a rigorous image compression pipeline, the same pipeline used
by `Google PageSpeed`_ to determine potential image optimizations.

All image processing and optimization is done via an in-house native node module, `ripcord`_.


Copilot API
-----------

For Copilot API-powered sites, image processing parameters are specified on the photo document,
which are usually updated by editorial teams via the Copilot CMS.

These are then augmented by the URL parameters which are usually specified by the frontend, in order
to generate the appropriate image for the layout.


WordPress support
-----------------

Currently, Vulcan supports on-the-fly image processing for select WordPress sites. The primary
difference is Vulcan will not crop WordPress images, by design.

See :ref:`wordpress-url-schema` for more information on the differences between interacting with
Vulcan with a WordPress site.


Contents:
=========

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2

   migrating_to_vulcan
   transformations


Indices and tables
==================

* :ref:`genindex`
* :ref:`search`

.. * :ref:`modindex`


.. _Google PageSpeed: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
.. _ripcord: https://github.com/CondeNast/ripcord