GifCountdown

Create a animated gif countdown picture using RMagick.

Each frame is a second.

Useful for mailings campaign / event notifications.

blob = GifCountdown.generate(distance_in_seconds: distance_in_seconds, duration: 5)

Usage in a Rails controller:

def show
  distance_in_seconds = (some_future_event - Time.zone.now).round

  blob = GifCountdown.generate(distance_in_seconds: distance_in_seconds, duration: 10)
  send_data blob, type: 'image/gif', disposition: 'inline'
end

Make sure to build a minute cache or something, as building that images might take a couple of seconds every time!

With defaults

distance_in_seconds: nil #Number of seconds to countdown
width: 535
height: 61
fontsize: 30
padding_x: 10
duration: 60 # how many seconds to generate - linearily takes longer to generator
font: 'Ubuntu' # That font must be installed on the target host that generates the image!

It uses "I18n" to build up the words "Days", "Hours", "Seconds", "Minutes" with plurarlization. The Gem ships with en/de.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'gif_countdown'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install gif_countdown

Contribution directions go here.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.