Get outer coordinates of a SVG path (getBBox)?

Question

I need to get the coordinates (x,y of top-left corner and width/height) of a SVG path in PHP.

I mean the d-attribute in a path node of an SVG-file, somehting like this:

<path d="M 100 100 L 300 100 L 200 300 z" />

My paths are quite complex to do this myself (some have absolute and/or relative coordinates, possible curves, etc.)

Are there any libraries for this kind of work in PHP?

Answer 1

If your shape doesn't use arcs or beziers (many shapes actually use straight lines to approximate curves) then you can use this PHP function to calculate the bounding box: http://pastebin.com/8eLQccbg

Answer 2

I'm thinking this solution to the problem is so simple that it must be wrong ;). But, although I've not tried it, it looks pretty good to me. Just install inkscape on your server, and then run this:

inkscape --without-gui --query-all /path/to/doc.svg

According to the help, this will List id,x,y,w,h for all objects - sounds like what I need, and also what is being asked for here! Sample output:

Layer_1,1.8032746e-06,-0.002,780.37099,455.91999
g4,0.090994976,-72.489183,72.445768,72.454697
polygon6,2.125,-70.896,69,69
polygon8,2.125,-70.896,69,69
g10,0.090994976,-72.489183,64.778768,3.5796973
path12,61.423995,-72.489183,3.4457675,3.5796973
path14,53.756995,-72.489183,3.4457675,3.5796973
path16,46.090995,-72.489183,3.4457675,3.5796973
path18,38.423995,-72.489183,3.4457675,3.5796973
....

This is quick enough to call in a web request, but if you've much in the way of load, you could push it to a background process very easily.

Answer 3

I've been looking for a solution for this as well and this is the best I found so far: http://rrbits.com/epb/2011/02/06/get-the-bounding-box-of-an-svg-path/

It converts the SVG into a bitmap and then finds the bbox using ImageMagic. Been thinking about writing one myself using the d coordinates but I'm afraid it will fail on curves etc.

Answer 4

Not pure PHP, but an option that worked for me was to use http://phantomjs.org to get the SVG bounding box.