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

Good afternoon,

I am trying to deliver an image to a client PC for whatever they may wish to do with it. After completing my purchasing process, I want to send the image to them to save or print. I have tried several methods of doing so (thank you, Super Search!) but can't seem to get either of them to work for me.

I have tried the following methods of doing this: 

my $file = "\\\\cromedome\\images\\182.TIF";

print $request->header(-type=>'image/tif',
                       -attachment=>$file);

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and 
my $file = "\\\\cromedome\\images\\182.TIF";
my $buffer;

open TIF, $file or die "Cant open image";
read TIF, $buffer, -s(TIF);
print $request->header(-type=>"image/tif"), $buffer;

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When the CGI executes, I get a dialog to "Open" or "Save As". Open lets me select my image viewer, but whatever data is being delivered to it is not my image.

One other trick: I'd like the file delivered in such a way (perhaps with a .TIF extension?) so Windows will know to pop open the default image viewer when I select open.

FWIW, clients will be using IE 5.5 and above, and likely Windows 2k. That's what I've been testing this with. Any insight is appreciated :)

Thanks!
MrCromeDome

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Delivering an image to a client browser/PC
by fglock (Vicar) on Sep 03, 2002 at 18:42 UTC

    delivered in such a way (perhaps with a .TIF extension?)

    You can do this with a content-disposition header

    Did you try  binmode the file?

    Try also  do { local $/; $img = <TIF> };

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      Tried to binmode the file prior to reading it, but it didn't change the outcome. I also tried substituting in the code you suggested, but again, the outcome was undesirable.

      How would that content-disposition header look? Outside of cookies and redirects, I've never had occasion to alter the header before.

      Thanks for your assistance,
      MrCromeDome

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Re: Delivering an image to a client browser/PC
by zaimoni (Beadle) on Sep 03, 2002 at 23:08 UTC

    This fragment is from a login-protection script I wrote to test a system I'm eventually planning to deploy on my own domain. It works on my server's FreeBSD installation, with IE5.5, NS4.xx, and NS6.xx clients.

    use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

sub NiceGetFile
{
  my ($Filename) = @_;
  my $RawHTML = "";
  if (open(FILE,"<".$Filename))
    {
    binmode(FILE);
    my $Position = sysseek(FILE,0,2);
    if ($Position)
      {
      sysseek(FILE,0,0);
      sysread(FILE,$RawHTML,$Position);
      }
    close(FILE);
    }
  return $RawHTML;
}

# probably should set the CGI config to blast excessive 
# POSTS here

my $DynPage = new CGI;

# Do anti-leeching code immediately

my $file = 'Demo.zip';

my $ZIPFile = &NiceGetFile('ZIP/'.$file);
unless($ZIPFile)
  {    # inform user and email admin
# ....
  };

# NOTE: could use Content-MD5 header here
# NOTE: change the type-header to the real MIME-type
print $DynPage->header(-type=>'application/zip',
                       -Content_Length=>length($ZIPFile));

binmode( STDOUT );
print $ZIPFile;

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