Develop Reference

How do i display a matrix array(that i created using 1s and 0s) on the html canvas with javascript?

Ive done this before but cant remember how... i am trying to make a minecraft looking dude using the following array:
[0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0];
What i want to do is color only the "1s" and display it on canvas. ive looked on google but all i can find is how to use a for loop to create the array.

Dimensions
You need at least the width of the 2D array as you have only created a 1D array. Given the width the height can be calculated from the array length.
BTW your array is missing a few commas (end of first two rows)
Abstraction
Generally I find it a lot easier to use a string rather than an array as a string is much easier to enter and manipulate.
With that we can also use different characters to represent 0 and 1 to help visualize what is being created.
As using a string adds some additional unneeded characters, white space and return (or new line return pair depending on editor) we can use a RegExp to remove these characters from the string.
To keep the data organized we can define an object that contains the map, width.
To set the colors we can define an additional object that holds a color for each char we use in the map. For transparent cells we simply do not define that color, the rendering function will skip cells that it can not find a color for.
[0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0 // << missing comma
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0 // << missing comma
0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,0,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,0,1,1,1,0,1,1,
1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0,
0,0,1,1,0,1,1,0,0];
Thus becomes
const man = {
width: 9,
map:
`___###___
___###___
___###___
#########
##_###_##
##_###_##
##_###_##
####_####
__##_##__
__##_##__
__##_##__
__##_##__`.replace(/\s|\n|\r\n/gm,""), // remove unwanted chars
};
const colors = { // Use CSS color strings
"#": "Black",
};
Rendering
We the data set out we can then create a basic draw function function drawMap(ctx, map, colors, cellSize). It will except a canvas 2D context, the map and colors objects, and a value to define how large each cell cellSize is on the canvas (in pixels)
The canvas element HTMLCanvasElement
The canvas that is used is referenced by its DOM id (Note that id must be unique) eg <canvas id="canvas1" width="90" height="140"></canvas> can be accessed in JavaScript as canvas1
The rendering API CanvasRenderingContext2D
To draw on the canvas we need the CanvasRenderingContext2D API (commonly named ctx). There is one for each canvas. To get the API for a canvas use HTMLCanvasElement.getContext and request the 2D API eg const ctx = canvas1.getContext("2d")
See comments in demo for more information.
Demo snippet
The demo adds some additional cell types and a second color set and draw the map in two canvas using the two color maps. This just to show how the defined data can be used.
const man = {
width: 9,
cells:
`___###___
___###___
___###___
_===#===_
==_===_==
##_===_##
##_***_##
##**_**##
__**_**__
__**_**__
__**_**__
__MM_MM__
_MMM_MMM_`.replace(/\s|\n|\r\n/gm,"")
};
const colors = {
"#": "#CA4",
"M": "#000",
"*": "#4AC",
"=": "#C44",
};
const mono = {
"#": "#CA4",
"M": "#CA4",
"*": "#CA4",
"=": "#CA4",
};
function drawMap(ctx, map, colors, cellSize) {
var idx = 0;
while (idx < map.cells.length) {
const col = colors[map.cells[idx]]; //get the cell char and lookup the color
if (col) { // only if there is a color else leave it blank
// use the idx to get the x, y pos of the cell
const x = (idx % map.width) * cellSize;
const y = (idx / map.width | 0) * cellSize; // | 0 rounds down (floors) idx / map.width
ctx.fillStyle = col;
ctx.fillRect(x, y, cellSize, cellSize); // fill the cell
}
idx += 1;
}
}
drawMap(canvas1.getContext("2d"), man, colors, 10);
drawMap(canvas2.getContext("2d"), man, mono, 10);
<canvas id="canvas1" width="100" height="140"></canvas>
<canvas id="canvas2" width="100" height="140"></canvas>

How could I make an optimized canvas pixel rendering?

I'm researching for a method for drawing a pixel with a well optimised method,
reducing the probability of fps drops. I use 2d, because it's more easy than webgl contexts. Here is a code that I tried:
<script>
document.write(".")
document.body.innerHTML=""
document.body.style.margin="0 0 0 0"
c=document.createElement("canvas")
document.body.appendChild(c)
ctx=c.getContext("2d")
setInterval(function(){
c.width=innerWidth
c.height=innerHeight
for(x=0;x<innerWidth;x++){
for(y=0;y<innerHeight;y++){
ctx.fillStyle="rgba(0,0,0,1)"
ctx.fillRect(x,y,x+1,y+1)
}}},1)
</script>
But when I save this as html file and open the html file with a navigator, the navigator gets caught and takes more than 2 seconds for load an image.

(() => {
document.write(".")
document.body.innerHTML=""
document.body.style.margin="0 0 0 0"
c=document.createElement("canvas")
document.body.appendChild(c)
ctx=c.getContext("2d")
c.width=innerWidth
c.height=innerHeight
x = 0;
y = 0;
function drawPixel() {
ctx.fillStyle="rgba(0,0,0,1)";
ctx.fillRect(x,y,x+1,y+1);
x ++;
if (x > innerWidth) {
x = 0;
y ++;
}
if (y < innerHeight)
requestAnimationFrame(drawPixel);
}
requestAnimationFrame(drawPixel)
})()
Try this, it's almost the same you did. You need to change some parts to get a better perfomance, i just adapted your code to work with requestAnimationFrame.

The quickest way to draw pixels one at a time is to create a image data object and add a typed array that holds each pixel as a 32 bit integer.
// assuming the ctx has been defined
var pixelData = ctx.getImageData(0, 0, ctx.canvas.width, ctx.canvas.height);
pixelData.data32 = new Uint32Array(pixelData.data.buffer); // create 32bit pixel
The quickest way to fill the buffered pixel data is via the typedArray.fill function
const white = 0xFFFFFFFF;
pixelData.data32.fill(white);
Or green
const green = 0xFF00FF00;
pixelData.data32.fill(green);
To set on pixel via its coordinates
function setPixel(x,y,color){
pixelData.data32[x + y * ctx.canvas.width] = color;
}
setPixel(10,10,0xFFFFFFFF);
To move the pixels to the canvas use
ctx.putImageData(pixelData,0,0);
The colour channels for a 32bit pixels are in the order ABGR such that 0xFF000000 is black 0x00000000 is transparent, 0xFFFF0000 is blue, 0xFF00FF00 is green and 0xFF0000FF is red. (note in some very rare situations the can change depending on the hardware's Endianness )

pdf.js: Get the text colour

I have a simple pdf file, containing the words "Hello world", each in a different colour.
I'm loading the PDF, like this:
PDFJS.getDocument('test.pdf').then( onPDF );
function onPDF( pdf )
{
pdf.getPage( 1 ).then( onPage );
}
function onPage( page )
{
page.getTextContent().then( onText );
}
function onText( text )
{
console.log( JSON.stringify( text ) );
}
And I get a JSON output like this:
{
"items" : [{
"str" : "Hello ",
"dir" : "ltr",
"width" : 29.592,
"height" : 12,
"transform" : [12, 0, 0, 12, 56.8, 774.1],
"fontName" : "g_font_1"
}, {
"str" : "world",
"dir" : "ltr",
"width" : 27.983999999999998,
"height" : 12,
"transform" : [12, 0, 0, 12, 86.5, 774.1],
"fontName" : "g_font_1"
}
],
"styles" : {
"g_font_1" : {
"fontFamily" : "serif",
"ascent" : 0.891,
"descent" : 0.216
}
}
}
However, I've not been able to find a way to determine the colour of each word. When I render it, it renders properly, so I know the information is in there somewhere. Is there somewhere I can access this?

As Respawned alluded to, there is no easy answer that will work in all cases. That being said, here are two approaches which seem to work fairly well. Both having upsides and downsides.
Approach 1
Internally, the getTextContent method uses whats called an EvaluatorPreprocessor to parse the PDF operators, and maintain the graphic state. So what we can do is, implement a custom EvaluatorPreprocessor, overwrite the preprocessCommand method, and use it to add the current text color to the graphic state. Once this is in place, anytime a new text chunk is created, we can add a color attribute, and set it to the current color state.
The downsides to this approach are:
Requires modifying the PDFJS source code. It also depends heavily on
the current implementation of PDFJS, and could break if this is
changed.
It will fail in cases where the text is used as a path to be filled with an image. In some PDF creators (such as Photoshop), the way it creates colored text is, it first creates a clipping path from all the given text characters, and then paints a solid image over the path. So the only way to deduce the fill-color is by reading the pixel values from the image, which would require painting it to a canvas. Even hooking into paintChar wont be of much help here, since the fill color will only emerge at a later time.
The upside is, its fairly robust and works irrespective of the page background. It also does not require rendering anything to canvas, so it can be done entirely in the background thread.
Code
All the modifications are made in the core/evaluator.js file.
First you must define the custom evaluator, after the EvaluatorPreprocessor definition.
var CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor = (function() {
function CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor(stream, xref, stateManager, resources) {
EvaluatorPreprocessor.call(this, stream, xref, stateManager);
this.resources = resources;
this.xref = xref;
// set initial color state
var state = this.stateManager.state;
state.textRenderingMode = TextRenderingMode.FILL;
state.fillColorSpace = ColorSpace.singletons.gray;
state.fillColor = [0,0,0];
}
CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor.prototype = Object.create(EvaluatorPreprocessor.prototype);
CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor.prototype.preprocessCommand = function(fn, args) {
EvaluatorPreprocessor.prototype.preprocessCommand.call(this, fn, args);
var state = this.stateManager.state;
switch(fn) {
case OPS.setFillColorSpace:
state.fillColorSpace = ColorSpace.parse(args[0], this.xref, this.resources);
break;
case OPS.setFillColor:
var cs = state.fillColorSpace;
state.fillColor = cs.getRgb(args, 0);
break;
case OPS.setFillGray:
state.fillColorSpace = ColorSpace.singletons.gray;
state.fillColor = ColorSpace.singletons.gray.getRgb(args, 0);
break;
case OPS.setFillCMYKColor:
state.fillColorSpace = ColorSpace.singletons.cmyk;
state.fillColor = ColorSpace.singletons.cmyk.getRgb(args, 0);
break;
case OPS.setFillRGBColor:
state.fillColorSpace = ColorSpace.singletons.rgb;
state.fillColor = ColorSpace.singletons.rgb.getRgb(args, 0);
break;
}
};
return CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor;
})();
Next, you need to modify the getTextContent method to use the new evaluator:
var preprocessor = new CustomEvaluatorPreprocessor(stream, xref, stateManager, resources);
And lastly, in the newTextChunk method, add a color attribute:
color: stateManager.state.fillColor
Approach 2
Another approach would be to extract the text bounding boxes via getTextContent, render the page, and for each text, get the pixel values which reside within its bounds, and take that to be the fill color.
The downsides to this approach are:
The computed text bounding boxes are not always correct, and in some cases may even be off completely (eg: rotated text). If the bounding box does not cover at least partially the actual text on canvas, then this method will fail. We can recover from complete failures, by checking that the text pixels have a color variance greater than a threshold. The rationale being, if bounding box is completely background, it will have little variance, in which case we can fallback to a default text color (or maybe even the color of k nearest-neighbors).
The method assumes the text is darker than the background. Otherwise, the background could be mistaken as the fill color. This wont be a problem is most cases, as most docs have white backgrounds.
The upside is, its simple, and does not require messing with the PDFJS source-code. Also, it will work in cases where the text is used as a clipping path, and filled with an image. Though this can become hazy when you have complex image fills, in which case, the choice of text color becomes ambiguous.
Demo
http://jsfiddle.net/x2rajt5g/
Sample PDF's to test:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0t5vtu6qqsdm1d4/color-test.pdf?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cq0067u80o79o7x/testTextColour.pdf?dl=1
Code
function parseColors(canvasImgData, texts) {
var data = canvasImgData.data,
width = canvasImgData.width,
height = canvasImgData.height,
defaultColor = [0, 0, 0],
minVariance = 20;
texts.forEach(function (t) {
var left = Math.floor(t.transform[4]),
w = Math.round(t.width),
h = Math.round(t.height),
bottom = Math.round(height - t.transform[5]),
top = bottom - h,
start = (left + (top * width)) * 4,
color = [],
best = Infinity,
stat = new ImageStats();
for (var i, v, row = 0; row < h; row++) {
i = start + (row * width * 4);
for (var col = 0; col < w; col++) {
if ((v = data[i] + data[i + 1] + data[i + 2]) < best) { // the darker the "better"
best = v;
color[0] = data[i];
color[1] = data[i + 1];
color[2] = data[i + 2];
}
stat.addPixel(data[i], data[i+1], data[i+2]);
i += 4;
}
}
var stdDev = stat.getStdDev();
t.color = stdDev < minVariance ? defaultColor : color;
});
}
function ImageStats() {
this.pixelCount = 0;
this.pixels = [];
this.rgb = [];
this.mean = 0;
this.stdDev = 0;
}
ImageStats.prototype = {
addPixel: function (r, g, b) {
if (!this.rgb.length) {
this.rgb[0] = r;
this.rgb[1] = g;
this.rgb[2] = b;
} else {
this.rgb[0] += r;
this.rgb[1] += g;
this.rgb[2] += b;
}
this.pixelCount++;
this.pixels.push([r,g,b]);
},
getStdDev: function() {
var mean = [
this.rgb[0] / this.pixelCount,
this.rgb[1] / this.pixelCount,
this.rgb[2] / this.pixelCount
];
var diff = [0,0,0];
this.pixels.forEach(function(p) {
diff[0] += Math.pow(mean[0] - p[0], 2);
diff[1] += Math.pow(mean[1] - p[1], 2);
diff[2] += Math.pow(mean[2] - p[2], 2);
});
diff[0] = Math.sqrt(diff[0] / this.pixelCount);
diff[1] = Math.sqrt(diff[1] / this.pixelCount);
diff[2] = Math.sqrt(diff[2] / this.pixelCount);
return diff[0] + diff[1] + diff[2];
}
};

This question is actually extremely hard if you want to do it to perfection... or it can be relatively easy if you can live with solutions that work only some of the time.
First of all, realize that getTextContent is intended for searchable text extraction and that's all it's intended to do.
It's been suggested in the comments above that you use page.getOperatorList(), but that's basically re-implementing the whole PDF drawing model in your code... which is basically silly because the largest chunk of PDFJS does exactly that... except not for the purpose of text extraction but for the purpose of rendering to canvas. So what you want to do is to hack canvas.js so that instead of just setting its internal knobs it also does some callbacks to your code. Alas, if you go this way, you won't be able to use stock PDFJS, and I rather doubt that your goal of color extraction will be seen as very useful for PDFJS' main purpose, so your changes are likely not going to get accepted upstream, so you'll likely have to maintain your own fork of PDFJS.
After this dire warning, what you'd need to minimally change are the functions where PDFJS has parsed the PDF color operators and sets its own canvas painting color. That happens around line 1566 (of canvas.js) in function setFillColorN. You'll also need to hook the text render... which is rather a character renderer at canvas.js level, namely CanvasGraphics_paintChar around line 1270. With these two hooked, you'll get a stream of callbacks for color changes interspersed between character drawing sequences. So you can reconstruct the color of character sequences reasonably easy from this.. in the simple color cases.
And now I'm getting to the really ugly part: the fact that PDF has an extremely complex color model. First there are two colors for drawing anything, including text: a fill color and stroke (outline) color. So far not too scary, but the color is an index in a ColorSpace... of which there are several, RGB being only one possibility. Then there's also alpha and compositing modes, so the layers (of various alphas) can result in a different final color depending on the compositing mode. And the PDFJS has not a single place where it accumulates color from layers.. it simply [over]paints them as they come. So if you only extract the fill color changes and ignore alpha, compositing etc.. it will work but not for complex documents.
Hope this helps.

There's no need to patch pdfjs, the transform property gives the x and y, so you can go through the operator list and find the setFillColor op that precedes the text op at that point.

mouse position to isometric tile including height

Struggeling translating the position of the mouse to the location of the tiles in my grid. When it's all flat, the math looks like this:
this.position.x = Math.floor(((pos.y - 240) / 24) + ((pos.x - 320) / 48));
this.position.y = Math.floor(((pos.y - 240) / 24) - ((pos.x - 320) / 48));
where pos.x and pos.y are the position of the mouse, 240 and 320 are the offset, 24 and 48 the size of the tile. Position then contains the grid coordinate of the tile I'm hovering over. This works reasonably well on a flat surface.
Now I'm adding height, which the math does not take into account.
This grid is a 2D grid containing noise, that's being translated to height and tile type. Height is really just an adjustment to the 'Y' position of the tile, so it's possible for two tiles to be drawn in the same spot.
I don't know how to determine which tile I'm hovering over.
edit:
Made some headway... Before, I was depending on the mouseover event to calculate grid position. I just changed this to do the calculation in the draw loop itself, and check if the coordinates are within the limits of the tile currently being drawn. creates some overhead tho, not sure if I'm super happy with it but I'll confirm if it works.
edit 2018:
I have no answer, but since this ha[sd] an open bounty, help yourself to some code and a demo
The grid itself is, simplified;
let grid = [[10,15],[12,23]];
which leads to a drawing like:
for (var i = 0; i < grid.length; i++) {
for (var j = 0; j < grid[0].length; j++) {
let x = (j - i) * resourceWidth;
let y = ((i + j) * resourceHeight) + (grid[i][j] * -resourceHeight);
// the "+" bit is the adjustment for height according to perlin noise values
}
}
edit post-bounty:
See GIF. The accepted answer works. The delay is my fault, the screen doesn't update on mousemove (yet) and the frame rate is low-ish. It's clearly bringing back the right tile.
Source

Intresting task.
Lets try to simplify it - lets resolve this concrete case
Solution
Working version is here: https://github.com/amuzalevskiy/perlin-landscape (changes https://github.com/jorgt/perlin-landscape/pull/1 )
Explanation
First what came into mind is:
Just two steps:
find an vertical column, which matches some set of tiles
iterate tiles in set from bottom to top, checking if cursor is placed lower than top line
Step 1
We need two functions here:
Detects column:
function getColumn(mouseX, firstTileXShiftAtScreen, columnWidth) {
return (mouseX - firstTileXShiftAtScreen) / columnWidth;
}
Function which extracts an array of tiles which correspond to this column.
Rotate image 45 deg in mind. The red numbers are columnNo. 3 column is highlighted. X axis is horizontal
function tileExists(x, y, width, height) {
return x >= 0 & y >= 0 & x < width & y < height;
}
function getTilesInColumn(columnNo, width, height) {
let startTileX = 0, startTileY = 0;
let xShift = true;
for (let i = 0; i < columnNo; i++) {
if (tileExists(startTileX + 1, startTileY, width, height)) {
startTileX++;
} else {
if (xShift) {
xShift = false;
} else {
startTileY++;
}
}
}
let tilesInColumn = [];
while(tileExists(startTileX, startTileY, width, height)) {
tilesInColumn.push({x: startTileX, y: startTileY, isLeft: xShift});
if (xShift) {
startTileX--;
} else {
startTileY++;
}
xShift = !xShift;
}
return tilesInColumn;
}
Step 2
A list of tiles to check is ready. Now for each tile we need to find a top line. Also we have two types of tiles: left and right. We already stored this info during building matching tiles set.
function getTileYIncrementByTileZ(tileZ) {
// implement here
return 0;
}
function findExactTile(mouseX, mouseY, tilesInColumn, tiles2d,
firstTileXShiftAtScreen, firstTileYShiftAtScreenAt0Height,
tileWidth, tileHeight) {
// we built a set of tiles where bottom ones come first
// iterate tiles from bottom to top
for(var i = 0; i < tilesInColumn; i++) {
let tileInfo = tilesInColumn[i];
let lineAB = findABForTopLineOfTile(tileInfo.x, tileInfo.y, tiles2d[tileInfo.x][tileInfo.y],
tileInfo.isLeft, tileWidth, tileHeight);
if ((mouseY - firstTileYShiftAtScreenAt0Height) >
(mouseX - firstTileXShiftAtScreen)*lineAB.a + lineAB.b) {
// WOHOO !!!
return tileInfo;
}
}
}
function findABForTopLineOfTile(tileX, tileY, tileZ, isLeftTopLine, tileWidth, tileHeight) {
// find a top line ~~~ a,b
// y = a * x + b;
let a = tileWidth / tileHeight;
if (isLeftTopLine) {
a = -a;
}
let b = isLeftTopLine ?
tileY * 2 * tileHeight :
- (tileX + 1) * 2 * tileHeight;
b -= getTileYIncrementByTileZ(tileZ);
return {a: a, b: b};
}

Please don't judge me as I am not posting any code. I am just suggesting an algorithm that can solve it without high memory usage.
The Algorithm:
Actually to determine which tile is on mouse hover we don't need to check all the tiles. At first we think the surface is 2D and find which tile the mouse pointer goes over with the formula OP posted. This is the farthest probable tile mouse cursor can point at this cursor position.
This tile can receive mouse pointer if it's at 0 height, by checking it's current height we can verify if this is really at the height to receive pointer, we mark it and move forward.
Then we find the next probable tile which is closer to the screen by incrementing or decrementing x,y grid values depending on the cursor position.
Then we keep on moving forward in a zigzag fashion until we reach a tile which cannot receive pointer even if it is at it's maximum height.
When we reach this point the last tile found that were at a height to receive pointer is the tile that we are looking for.
In this case we only checked 8 tiles to determine which tile is currently receiving pointer. This is very memory efficient in comparison to checking all the tiles present in the grid and yields faster result.

One way to solve this would be to follow the ray that goes from the clicked pixel on the screen into the map. For that, just determine the camera position in relation to the map and the direction it is looking at:
const camPos = {x: -5, y: -5, z: -5}
const camDirection = { x: 1, y:1, z:1}
The next step is to get the touch Position in the 3D world. In this certain perspective that is quite simple:
const touchPos = {
x: camPos.x + touch.x / Math.sqrt(2),
y: camPos.y - touch.x / Math.sqrt(2),
z: camPos.z - touch.y / Math.sqrt(2)
};
Now you just need to follow the ray into the layer (scale the directions so that they are smaller than one of your tiles dimensions):
for(let delta = 0; delta < 100; delta++){
const x = touchPos.x + camDirection.x * delta;
const y = touchPos.y + camDirection.y * delta;
const z = touchPos.z + camDirection.z * delta;
Now just take the tile at xz and check if y is smaller than its height;
const absX = ~~( x / 24 );
const absZ = ~~( z / 24 );
if(tiles[absX][absZ].height >= y){
// hanfle the over event
}

I had same situation on a game. first I tried with mathematics, but when I found that the clients wants to change the map type every day, I changed the solution with some graphical solution and pass it to the designer of the team. I captured the mouse position by listening the SVG elements click.
the main graphic directly used to capture and translate the mouse position to my required pixel.
https://blog.lavrton.com/hit-region-detection-for-html5-canvas-and-how-to-listen-to-click-events-on-canvas-shapes-815034d7e9f8
https://code.sololearn.com/Wq2bwzSxSnjl/#html

Here is the grid input I would define for the sake of this discussion. The output should be some tile (coordinate_1, coordinate_2) based on visibility on the users screen of the mouse:
I can offer two solutions from different perspectives, but you will need to convert this back into your problem domain. The first methodology is based on coloring tiles and can be more useful if the map is changing dynamically. The second solution is based on drawing coordinate bounding boxes based on the fact that tiles closer to the viewer like (0, 0) can never be occluded by tiles behind it (1,1).
Approach 1: Transparently Colored Tiles
The first approach is based on drawing and elaborated on here. I must give the credit to #haldagan for a particularly beautiful solution. In summary it relies on drawing a perfectly opaque layer on top of the original canvas and coloring every tile with a different color. This top layer should be subject to the same height transformations as the underlying layer. When the mouse hovers over a particular layer you can detect the color through canvas and thus the tile itself. This is the solution I would probably go with and this seems to be a not so rare issue in computer visualization and graphics (finding positions in a 3d isometric world).
Approach 2: Finding the Bounding Tile
This is based on the conjecture that the "front" row can never be occluded by "back" rows behind it. Furthermore, "closer to the screen" tiles cannot be occluded by tiles "farther from the screen". To make precise the meaning of "front", "back", "closer to the screen" and "farther from the screen", take a look at the following:
.
Based on this principle the approach is to build a set of polygons for each tile. So firstly we determine the coordinates on the canvas of just box (0, 0) after height scaling. Note that the height scale operation is simply a trapezoid stretched vertically based on height.
Then we determine the coordinates on the canvas of boxes (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1) after height scaling (we would need to subtract anything from those polygons which overlap with the polygon (0, 0)).
Proceed to build each boxes bounding coordinates by subtracting any occlusions from polygons closer to the screen, to eventually get coordinates of polygons for all boxes.
With these coordinates and some care you can ultimately determine which tile is pointed to by a binary search style through overlapping polygons by searching through bottom rows up.

It also matters what else is on the screen. Maths attempts work if your tiles are pretty much uniform. However if you are displaying various objects and want the user to pick them, it is far easier to have a canvas-sized map of identifiers.
function poly(ctx){var a=arguments;ctx.beginPath();ctx.moveTo(a[1],a[2]);
for(var i=3;i<a.length;i+=2)ctx.lineTo(a[i],a[i+1]);ctx.closePath();ctx.fill();ctx.stroke();}
function circle(ctx,x,y,r){ctx.beginPath();ctx.arc(x,y,r,0,2*Math.PI);ctx.fill();ctx.stroke();}
function Tile(h,c,f){
var cnv=document.createElement("canvas");cnv.width=100;cnv.height=h;
var ctx=cnv.getContext("2d");ctx.lineWidth=3;ctx.lineStyle="black";
ctx.fillStyle=c;poly(ctx,2,h-50,50,h-75,98,h-50,50,h-25);
poly(ctx,50,h-25,2,h-50,2,h-25,50,h-2);
poly(ctx,50,h-25,98,h-50,98,h-25,50,h-2);
f(ctx);return ctx.getImageData(0,0,100,h);
}
function put(x,y,tile,image,id,map){
var iw=image.width,tw=tile.width,th=tile.height,bdat=image.data,fdat=tile.data;
for(var i=0;i<tw;i++)
for(var j=0;j<th;j++){
var ijtw4=(i+j*tw)*4,a=fdat[ijtw4+3];
if(a!==0){
var xiyjiw=x+i+(y+j)*iw;
for(var k=0;k<3;k++)bdat[xiyjiw*4+k]=(bdat[xiyjiw*4+k]*(255-a)+fdat[ijtw4+k]*a)/255;
bdat[xiyjiw*4+3]=255;
map[xiyjiw]=id;
}
}
}
var cleanimage;
var pickmap;
function startup(){
var water=Tile(77,"blue",function(){});
var field=Tile(77,"lime",function(){});
var tree=Tile(200,"lime",function(ctx){
ctx.fillStyle="brown";poly(ctx,50,50,70,150,30,150);
ctx.fillStyle="forestgreen";circle(ctx,60,40,30);circle(ctx,68,70,30);circle(ctx,32,60,30);
});
var sheep=Tile(200,"lime",function(ctx){
ctx.fillStyle="white";poly(ctx,25,155,25,100);poly(ctx,75,155,75,100);
circle(ctx,50,100,45);circle(ctx,50,80,30);
poly(ctx,40,70,35,80);poly(ctx,60,70,65,80);
});
var cnv=document.getElementById("scape");
cnv.width=500;cnv.height=400;
var ctx=cnv.getContext("2d");
cleanimage=ctx.getImageData(0,0,500,400);
pickmap=new Uint8Array(500*400);
var tiles=[water,field,tree,sheep];
var map=[[[0,0],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[1,2],[3,2],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[2,2],[3,2],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1],[1,1]],
[[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]]];
for(var x=0;x<5;x++)
for(var y=0;y<5;y++){
var desc=map[y][x],tile=tiles[desc[0]];
put(200+x*50-y*50,200+x*25+y*25-tile.height-desc[1]*20,
tile,cleanimage,x+1+(y+1)*10,pickmap);
}
ctx.putImageData(cleanimage,0,0);
}
var mx,my,pick;
function mmove(event){
mx=Math.round(event.offsetX);
my=Math.round(event.offsetY);
if(mx>=0 && my>=0 && mx<cleanimage.width && my<cleanimage.height && pick!==pickmap[mx+my*cleanimage.width])
requestAnimationFrame(redraw);
}
function redraw(){
pick=pickmap[mx+my*cleanimage.width];
document.getElementById("pick").innerHTML=pick;
var ctx=document.getElementById("scape").getContext("2d");
ctx.putImageData(cleanimage,0,0);
if(pick!==0){
var temp=ctx.getImageData(0,0,cleanimage.width,cleanimage.height);
for(var i=0;i<pickmap.length;i++)
if(pickmap[i]===pick)
temp.data[i*4]=255;
ctx.putImageData(temp,0,0);
}
}
startup(); // in place of body.onload
<div id="pick">Move around</div>
<canvas id="scape" onmousemove="mmove(event)"></canvas>
Here the "id" is a simple x+1+(y+1)*10 (so it is nice when displayed) and fits into a byte (Uint8Array), which could go up to 15x15 display grid already, and there are wider types available too.
(Tried to draw it small, and it looked ok on the snippet editor screen but apparently it is still too large here)

Computer graphics is fun, right?
This is a special case of the more standard computational geometry "point location problem". You could also express it as a nearest neighbour search.
To make this look like a point location problem you just need to express your tiles as non-overlapping polygons in a 2D plane. If you want to keep your shapes in a 3D space (e.g. with a z buffer) this becomes the related "ray casting problem".
One source of good geometry algorithms is W. Randolf Franklin's website and turf.js contains an implementation of his PNPOLY algorithm.
For this special case we can be even faster than the general algorithms by treating our prior knowledge about the shape of the tiles as a coarse R-tree (a type of spatial index).

Canvas getImageData() For optimal performance. To pull out all data or one at a time?

I need to scan through every pixel in a canvas image and do some fiddling with the colors etc. For optimal performance, should I grab all the data in one go and work on it through the array? Or should I call each pixel as I work on it.
So basically...
data = context.getImageData(x, y, height, width);
VS
data = context.getImageData(x, y, 1, 1); //in a loop height*width times.

You'll get much higher performances by grabbing the image all at once since :
a) a (contiguous) acces to an array is way faster than a function call.
b) especially when this function isa method of a DOM object having some overhead.
c) and there might be buffer refresh issues that might delay response (if canvas is
on sight... or not depending on double buffering implementation).
So go for a one-time grab.
I'll suggest you look into Javascript Typed Arrays to get the most of the
imageData result.
If i may quote myself, look at how you can handle pixels fast in this old post of mine
(look after 2) ):
Nice ellipse on a canvas?
(i quoted the relevant part below : )
You can get a UInt32Array view on your ImageData with :
var myGetImageData = myTempCanvas.getImageData(0,0,sizeX, sizeY);
var sourceBuffer32 = new Uint32Array(myGetImageData.data.buffer);
then sourceBuffer32[i] contains Red, Green, Blue, and transparency packed into one unsigned 32 bit int. Compare it to 0 to know if pixel is non-black ( != (0,0,0,0) )
OR you can be more precise with a Uint8Array view :
var myGetImageData = myTempCanvas.getImageData(0,0,sizeX, sizeY);
var sourceBuffer8 = new Uint8Array(myGetImageData.data.buffer);
If you deal only with shades of grey, then R=G=B, so watch for
sourceBuffer8[4*i]>Threshold
and you can set the i-th pixel to black in one time using the UInt32Array view :
sourceBuffer32[i]=0xff000000;
set to any color/alpha with :
sourceBuffer32[i]= (A<<24) | (B<<16) | (G<<8) | R ;
or just to any color :
sourceBuffer32[i]= 0xff000000 | (B<<16) | (G<<8) | R ;
(be sure R is rounded).
Listening to #Ken's comment, yes endianness can be an issue when you start fighting with bits 32 at a time.
Most computer are using little-endian, so RGBA becomes ABGR when dealing with them 32bits a once.
Since it is the vast majority of systems, if dealing with 32bit integer assume this is the case,
and you can -for compatibility- reverse your computation before writing the 32 bits results on Big endian systems.
Let me share those two functions :
function isLittleEndian() {
// from TooTallNate / endianness.js. https://gist.github.com/TooTallNate/4750953
var b = new ArrayBuffer(4);
var a = new Uint32Array(b);
var c = new Uint8Array(b);
a[0] = 0xdeadbeef;
if (c[0] == 0xef) { isLittleEndian = function() {return true }; return true; }
if (c[0] == 0xde) { isLittleEndian = function() {return false }; return false; }
throw new Error('unknown endianness');
}
function reverseUint32 (uint32) {
var s32 = new Uint32Array(4);
var s8 = new Uint8Array(s32.buffer);
var t32 = new Uint32Array(4);
var t8 = new Uint8Array(t32.buffer);
reverseUint32 = function (x) {
s32[0] = x;
t8[0] = s8[3];
t8[1] = s8[2];
t8[2] = s8[1];
t8[3] = s8[0];
return t32[0];
}
return reverseUint32(uint32);
};

Additionally to what GameAlchemist said, if you want to get or set all the colors of a pixel simultaneously, but you don't want to check endianness, you can use a DataView:
var data = context.getImageData(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
var view = new DataView(data.data.buffer);
// Read or set pixel (x,y) as #RRGGBBAA (big endian)
view.getUint32(4 * (x + y*canvas.width));
view.setUint32(4 * (x + y*canvas.width), 0xRRGGBBAA);
// Read or set pixel (x,y) as #AABBGGRR (little endian)
view.getUint32(4 * (x + y*canvas.width), true);
view.setUint32(4 * (x + y*canvas.width), 0xAABBGGRR, true);
// Save changes
ctx.putImageData(data, 0, 0);

It depends on what exactly you're doing, but I'd suggest grabbing it all at once, and then looping through it.
Grabbing it all at once is faster than grabbing it pixel by pixel, since searching through an array is a lot faster than searching through a canvas, once for each pixel.
If you're really in need of speed, look into web workers. You can set each one to grab a specific section of the canvas, and since they can run simultaneously, they'll make much better use out of your CPU.
getImageData() isn't really slow enough for you to notice the difference if you were to grab it all at once or individually, in my experiences using the function.