I'm back to work on my thermometer graph generation code. Our launch date on this project is now bearing down and I need to wrap this up. Its mostly working now, but I'm working to add a few bells and whistles to the module. I had asked some questions that got me this far about two weeks ago: Seeking GD::Graph like goal-thermometer graph.

Tonight, though, I'm seeing a usage message when I try to feed a custom color into the mix. Only I don't see how my use of the ->colorAllocate() method does not confirm to the spec presented in the usage message. And for some strange reason, my system gives me no perldoc for GD::Image.

My code complains:

Usage: GD::Image::colorAllocate(image, r, g, b) at /home/hesco/sb/GD-G
+raph-Thermometer/lib/GD/Graph/Thermometer.pm line 133.

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and looks like this:

package GD::Graph::Thermometer;

use warnings;
use strict;
use Carp;
use GD;
use GD::Text::Align;
use Data::Dumper;
use constant PI => 3.14;

sub new {
  my $self = shift;
  my $args = shift;

  .  .  .  

  my $image = new GD::Image($args->{width},$args->{height});
  my $colors = $self->_define_colors($image, {
       background_color => $args->{'background_color'},
          outline_color => $args->{'outline_color'},
             text_color => $args->{'text_color'},
          mercury_color => $args->{'mercury_color'}
       });

  .  .  .  

  return;
}

sub _define_colors {
  my $self = shift;
  my $image = shift;
  my $custom_colors = shift;

  print STDERR Dumper($self,$image,$custom_colors);

  .  .  .  

  my $text_color;
  if (defined($custom_colors->{text_color})) {
    $text_color = $image->colorAllocate($custom_colors->{text_color});
  } else {
    $text_color = $self->_black($image);
  }

  .  .  .  

  return $colors;
}

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I'm invoking this module as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use lib qw{/home/hesco/sb/GD-Graph-Thermometer/lib};
use GD::Graph::Thermometer;

my $result = GD::Graph::Thermometer->new({
             image_path => '/home/hesco/GD-Thermometer.png',
                   goal => '80000',
                current => '50000',
                  title => 'Funding the League in 2007 ($)',
                  width => '100',
                 height => '200',
#       background_color => '',
             text_color => [0,0,255],
#          outline_color => '',
#          mercury_color => ''
    });

1;

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And finally the output of my Data::Dumper invocation:

$ ./render_thermometer.pl
$VAR1 = 'GD::Graph::Thermometer';
$VAR2 = bless( do{\(my $o = 137557384)}, 'GD::Image' );
$VAR3 = {
          'mercury_color' => undef,
          'background_color' => undef,
          'outline_color' => undef,
          'text_color' => [
                            0,
                            0,
                            255
                          ]
        };
Usage: GD::Image::colorAllocate(image, r, g, b) at /home/hesco/sb/GD-G
+raph-Thermometer/lib/GD/Graph/Thermometer.pm line 133.

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I'd certainly appreciate someone with a clue on how to use this method speaking up to show me how. I've tried to pass that array of rgb values in every which way I know how. But nothing seems to work.

Thanks,
-- Hugh

UPDATE

Success!

As suggested in the replies below, I had tried dereferencing the array to feed it into the ->colorAllocate method, without success. The error messages read:

Not an ARRAY reference at /home/hesco/sb/GD-Graph-Thermometer/lib/GD/G
+raph/Thermometer.pm line 133.

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Even when I tried my best to feed it an array reference. But here is the code which worked, inserting into the module itself, at line 133:

  my $text_color;
  if (defined($custom_colors->{text_color})) {
    $text_color = $image->colorAllocate(
        $custom_colors->{text_color}[0],
        $custom_colors->{text_color}[1],
        $custom_colors->{text_color}[2]
      );
  } else {
    $text_color = $self->_black($image);
  }

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That code, along with the proper arguments sent to my constructor, turned my text labels and title blue. Next I propogate what I learned to the other code that is similarly broken.

Thank you all for your thoughts and input.

if( $lal && $lol ) { $life++; }

In reply to GD::Image::colorAllocate errors by hesco

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