title: Using Processing on a server to create images behind the scenes
body: <p>The way I see most people use <a href="http://processing.org" rel="noreferrer">Processing</a> is for drawing an image directly onto a screen or webpage on the client side.</p>
  
  <p>How would one use Processing to create an image without a visual canvas, then save this image to a file?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Here are the specific steps I'm interested in:</strong></p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Someone visits a webpage, which causes the Processing program to start running</li>
  <li>The Processing program would work behind the scenes to create an image, then save it to a known filename</li>
  <li>The webpage would load the known filename (which only exists after the Processing program is run - so, how can the webpage know to load the image when it's finished?)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I'm assuming that the Processing program is running on a server (which is contrary to how Processing usually works), and the file will be stored on the server. I'm also assuming some code in the Processing program to throttle the number of files that are created - for example, it won't create a new image if an existing image was created within 5 minutes.</p>