[javascript] Use HTML5 to resize an image before upload

Here is what I ended up doing and it worked great.

First I moved the file input outside of the form so that it is not submitted:

<input name="imagefile[]" type="file" id="takePictureField" accept="image/*" onchange="uploadPhotos(\'#{imageUploadUrl}\')" />
<form id="uploadImageForm" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input id="name" value="#{name}" />
    ... a few more inputs ... 
</form>

Then I changed the uploadPhotos function to handle only the resizing:

window.uploadPhotos = function(url){
    // Read in file
    var file = event.target.files[0];

    // Ensure it's an image
    if(file.type.match(/image.*/)) {
        console.log('An image has been loaded');

        // Load the image
        var reader = new FileReader();
        reader.onload = function (readerEvent) {
            var image = new Image();
            image.onload = function (imageEvent) {

                // Resize the image
                var canvas = document.createElement('canvas'),
                    max_size = 544,// TODO : pull max size from a site config
                    width = image.width,
                    height = image.height;
                if (width > height) {
                    if (width > max_size) {
                        height *= max_size / width;
                        width = max_size;
                    }
                } else {
                    if (height > max_size) {
                        width *= max_size / height;
                        height = max_size;
                    }
                }
                canvas.width = width;
                canvas.height = height;
                canvas.getContext('2d').drawImage(image, 0, 0, width, height);
                var dataUrl = canvas.toDataURL('image/jpeg');
                var resizedImage = dataURLToBlob(dataUrl);
                $.event.trigger({
                    type: "imageResized",
                    blob: resizedImage,
                    url: dataUrl
                });
            }
            image.src = readerEvent.target.result;
        }
        reader.readAsDataURL(file);
    }
};

As you can see I'm using canvas.toDataURL('image/jpeg'); to change the resized image into a dataUrl adn then I call the function dataURLToBlob(dataUrl); to turn the dataUrl into a blob that I can then append to the form. When the blob is created, I trigger a custom event. Here is the function to create the blob:

/* Utility function to convert a canvas to a BLOB */
var dataURLToBlob = function(dataURL) {
    var BASE64_MARKER = ';base64,';
    if (dataURL.indexOf(BASE64_MARKER) == -1) {
        var parts = dataURL.split(',');
        var contentType = parts[0].split(':')[1];
        var raw = parts[1];

        return new Blob([raw], {type: contentType});
    }

    var parts = dataURL.split(BASE64_MARKER);
    var contentType = parts[0].split(':')[1];
    var raw = window.atob(parts[1]);
    var rawLength = raw.length;

    var uInt8Array = new Uint8Array(rawLength);

    for (var i = 0; i < rawLength; ++i) {
        uInt8Array[i] = raw.charCodeAt(i);
    }

    return new Blob([uInt8Array], {type: contentType});
}
/* End Utility function to convert a canvas to a BLOB      */

Finally, here is my event handler that takes the blob from the custom event, appends the form and then submits it.

/* Handle image resized events */
$(document).on("imageResized", function (event) {
    var data = new FormData($("form[id*='uploadImageForm']")[0]);
    if (event.blob && event.url) {
        data.append('image_data', event.blob);

        $.ajax({
            url: event.url,
            data: data,
            cache: false,
            contentType: false,
            processData: false,
            type: 'POST',
            success: function(data){
               //handle errors...
            }
        });
    }
});