Display a picture (.jpg or .gif) from a mysql table

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

I am new to web programming.

I've been programing in VB for a while. Nothing commercial mostly easy stuff for work and myself.

I volunteered to help my daughter add a function to her website. So here is my problem.

I have code to add pictures to a MYSQL database. Now I can't seem to figure out how to get them back out so we can see them.

The MySQL doesn't seem to be a problem (yet), also I'm trying to learn PHP.

Any pointers or code samples will be greatly appreciated...

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29

Do you want to load the 'full' image in your database?

What I usually do is to load the images in a folder "images" and then the name of the pic (i.e. "myphoto.jpg") in the database, so i retrieve the name of the pic with:

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

From what I can see all that is doing is putting the name of the picture in the img src. I'm trying to display the actual image. Thanks though..

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

I can't seem to get that example to work. How would I prepend a directory name to the picture name?

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29

You load the photo in a folder at your server. Let's call it images. Then you retrieve $row['picname'].

Finally you can do:

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

Thanks for the help.

I'm still not having any luck but I think I'm close now.

A little more explaination maybe helpful.

The images are in a folder (picture_library) directly under where the php file is. The php file is in httpdocs.

I'm trying to put the information into a 2 Column table.

When I view the page I see the correct information in the 1st column but in the 2nd column all I see is an icon (I think it's the one you get when the browser can't find an image) and the word photo.

Here is the source:
// Display the Name & Picture in a paragraph
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($result) ) {
?>
<tr>
<td><a href="#" onClick="MM_openBrWindow('<?=$row['url']?>','url','toolbar=yes,location=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes')">
<?=$row['description']?> <br> <?=$row[filename]?>
</a>
<td>
<?PHP $path = "$_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]/picture_library/".$row['filename']; ?>
<img src="'<?php echo $path;?>'" alt="photo">

</td>
<?php
}

?>
</font></td>
</tr>

******************************************************

Here is what I see when I view the source of the page:
<td><a href="#" onClick="MM_openBrWindow('','url','toolbar=yes,location=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes')">
First Image <br> Finale-1.jpg </a>
<td>
<img src="'/home/httpd/vhosts/lupusonline.org/httpdocs/picture_library/Finale-1.jpg'" alt="photo">

</td>
<tr>

I really feel I'm close but don't understand HTML enough to correct my problem.

Thanks again for all the help.

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

That did it.....

Again THANK YOU for all... your help.

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

When I showed this to my daughter she still has a problem (typical user...). She needs to be able to stop people from copying the pictures from her Web site.

That is why I thought storing them in the database and then just displaying them on the fly would be the way to go. That was my original problem, I guess I didn't explain it properly.

I don't know if this is the proper Forum. How do I find a place on the server where the picture files can be stored but not be copied from?

or

Is my original thought of retreiveing them the database and displaying the the way to go. If so how would I go about that?

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29

With this all that you're doing is loading the pics on the web, so everybody who can use the right button of the mouse will copy the photos.

Just disable it. I'll try to find out how. I think it can be done using javascript.

Regards,

Pattons3rd · Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 1212 Location: Colorado

There is a way to disable it in the FAQ.
But if you read the rest there are ways of getting around it.

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

I mentioned disabling the button to my daughter and she knows how to do it.

What I'm tring to do is hide where the the pictures are located on the server so when you view the source you can't see where they are located. That's why i thought maybe storing them in a database whould do that. My other thought was putting them into a hidden/secure directory. Another thought I had was to put information into a php include somehow.

Here is the code:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>

<title>Lupus Online :: Resources for the Internet</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">

</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="title"><img src="images/logo.gif"></div>
</div>
<div id="nav" class="links" align="center"> <a hrefGaryMaster2.php?cid=1">organizations</a>
:: <a href="GaryMaster2.php?cid=2">information</a> :: <a href="GaryMaster2.php?cid=3">research</a>
:: <a href="GaryMaster2.php?cid=4">networking</a>
:: <a href="GaryEvents.php?cid=5">EVENTS</a>
:: <a href="comments.htm">comments</a>
</div>
<div id="content">
<p align="left">
<h3 align="left">
<h5 align="left"><font face="Tahoma, verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><br><br>Here
are the Pictures.
<br>

<?php
include ('/home/httpd/vhosts/lupusonline.org/httpdocs/includes/connect.txt');
?>

<p>  </p>
<table width="80%" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" bordercolor="#660066" id="all results">
<tr>
<td> <font size="-1" face="Tahoma, verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> 
NAME </font></td>
<td><font size="-1" face="Tahoma, verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif">
PICTURE </font>
<?php

// Request the Name & Picture
$result = @mysql_query("SELECT * from filestore WHERE left(filename,6) = 'finale'");
if (!$result) {
die('<p>Error performing query: ' . mysql_error() . '</p>');
}

// Display the Name & Picture in a paragraph
while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($result) ) {
?>
<tr>
<td><a href="#" onClick="MM_openBrWindow('<?=$row['url']?>','url','toolbar=yes,location=yes,menubar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes')">
<?=$row['description']?> <br> <?=$row[filename]?>
</a>
<td>
<?PHP $path = "picture_library/".$row['filename']; ?>

<img src="<?php echo $path;?>" alt="photo">
</td>
<?php
}

?>
</font></td>
</tr>

</table>
<p align="center"> </p>
</div>
</div>

</body>
</html>

I'm in over my head so any help will be grwatly appreciated.

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29

My dear garykoz,

No matter if you try to hide the folder or if you try to load the images to a database. Those are only solutions to storage the photos. When you make them appear on the web you're loading them on the web page and from it is where i can take them. As i haven't got any access to your database or to the folder i cannot get them straight from there. But as i tell you, they've been loaded on your web.

At least, this is the way i think it works.

garykoz · Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 13 Location: Rochester Hills, MI

So if I use files on the server I need to restrict access to the site somehow?

I'm still trying to figure out how to display them straight from the database. I have them loaded into the database as a MEDIUMBLOB file type. I've found a PHP function called "imagecreatefromstring". The format is imagecreatefromstring(image). The description says "Creates an image from the image stream in a string.

Now I'm searching for examples of the function.

coberr · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 29