Cantaloupe IIIF Image Server Setup

Admin / Technical Guide

Cantaloupe is a standalone Java-based IIIF image server that provides deep zoom tiling for high-resolution images. It runs as a separate service alongside AtoM and is proxied via Nginx.

Why Cantaloupe?

Without Cantaloupe, the IIIF viewer falls back to serving full images. With Cantaloupe, high-resolution images are served as tiles — only the visible portion at the current zoom level is loaded, enabling smooth deep zoom on multi-megapixel images.

Architecture

Browser ► Nginx ► /iiif/* ► Cantaloupe (port 8182)
                                       |
                                  delegates.rb
                                    |         |
                       Path routing -+         +- Auth callback
                       (Host - file path)        (AtoM check)

Key concept: Cantaloupe is a standalone Java process with no access to AtoM’s PHP config or database. The delegates.rb Ruby script is the bridge — it maps hostnames to file paths and enforces access control by calling back to AtoM.