powerhouse has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Perl Monks and Guru's, I am in desire need of your wisdom :o).

A few months back, I seen a file that a banner exchange used to "Print" a image, the <img src called a Perl script.

Is there a module that I could use to do the same thing?

Or would I just have it print the url of the image location, like this:
# in the perl script:
print "http://www.mydomain.com/banners/ban1.gif";
exit;
# end of script

[download]

or would I actually print a NEW tag like this:
#in the perl script:
print qq~<img src="http://www.mydomain.com/banners/ban1.gif">~;
exit;
# End of perl script

[download]


I know I don't have to tell it to exit at the end, I just put that there to show that is what the LAST Step would be.
I'd REALLLLLLY appreciate some assistance to point me in the right direction.

Thanks guys AND gals!!!!

Richard

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl "image" question...
by waswas-fng (Curate) on Feb 01, 2003 at 19:35 UTC
[reply]
      Awesome, the FIRST response on that Thread is what I am trying to do.

      Here is his comment, that I'm referring to:

      ###### Start his Comment....
      I assume you mean "how do I have a CGI program called from an image and have the CGI program pipe an image back to the IMG tag for display"?

      First off is the image tag. Nothing special here, it should looks just like a normal image tag except it calls your CGI and passes the apropriate parameters to it:

      <img src="img_gen.cgi?size=100">

      The interesting part is in your CGI. You need to return apropriate HTTP headers for the image (Content-Type: image/gif or whatever is apropriate). and then just pipe the image contents back. Here's a small CGI program that returns an image, its size based on the passed parameter 
      #!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use CGI;
use GD;

my $cgi=new CGI;
my $cgi_size=$cgi->param('size') || '50';

print "Content-type: image/gif\n\n";
my $gd=new GD::Image($cgi_size,$cgi_size);
my $blue=$gd->colorAllocate(0,0,255);
$gd->fill(0,0,$blue);
binmode STDOUT; #just in case we're on NT
print $gd->gif;

      [download]

      ####### End his comment


      Ok, that is KIND OF What I'm wanting to do.
      However, I want to use an Image I've already created.
      How do I do that?

      Here is what I have done so far, to no avail:

      This one is just testing, I'll add it to my script when it works
      #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use CGI qw(:standard :cgi-lib);
ReadParse(\%in);

if ((defined($in{img}) && $in{img} != 1) || !defined($in{img})) {
    $image_file = qq~/home/user/home_dir/graphics/banners/FRHWeb_366_x
+_60.gif~;
    open(IMG,"$image_file") or die "could not read image: $!";
        binmode IMG;
        $image_file_code = <IMG>;
    close(IMG);
    print "Content-type:image/gif\n\n";
    print $image_file_code;
    exit;

} else {

    $image_file = qq~/home/user/home_dir/graphics/banners/FRHWeb_212_x
+_60.gif~;
    open(IMG,"$image_file") or die "could not read image: $!";
        binmode IMG;
        $image_file_code = <IMG>;
    close(IMG);
    print "Content-type:image/gif\n\n";
    print $image_file_code;
    exit;
}

      [download]


      That does not work.
      I would really appreciate it if someone could help me.

      Thanks,
      Richard
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Use the second example (untested)
        
open (IMG, $image_file) or die "could not read image: $!";;
my ($image, $buff);
while (read IMG, $buff, 1024){
  $image .= $buff;
}
close IMG;
# assume it's a gif
print "Content-type: image/gif\n\n";
print $image;

        [download]
        poj
[reply]
[d/l]

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