Scanning Images

NoFear

Ok, scripting code that allows a user to display images from their own hard drive on the page being displayed. As long as the file location of the image they type in contains a valid link, everything is fine. For example:

C:\image.gif

As long as image.gif is there (in the User's hard drive), everything is fine, otherwise the "red x" is displayed.

What I want to accomplish is to try and get rid of the "red x" if the file doesn't exist. When I used "file_exists()", it scans the hard drive of the HOST, and not that of the USER to see if the file exists, then returns the message based on that.

Is there any way to scan the hard drive of the USER to see if the image is located on THEIR machine instead of the host's?

Thanks in advance for all the help. =)

cgraz

Is there any way to scan the hard drive of the USER to see if the image is located on THEIR machine instead of the host's?

That's not possible. If it was, nobody would use the internet from fear of privacy.

Just curious, why are you trying to display images on the persons hard drive? how will that image get there? What if they're on linux or a mac? C:/image.gif won't work.

Cgraz

NoFear

Originally posted by cgraz
That's not possible. If it was, nobody would use the internet from fear of privacy.

Just curious, why are you trying to display images on the persons hard drive? how will that image get there? What if they're on linux or a mac? C:/image.gif won't work.

Cgraz

This is what I was afraid of. I was fairly certain that it wasn't possible.

The reason for this is that I'm trying a combination of letting a user customize their own web experience by allowing them to place graphics in a specified folder on their hard drive that are displayed as they navigate through the site and maximizing my site's bandwidth by not having to send over the images. It works fine as long as the graphics exist, but if they don't, that's when the problem arrises.

Thanks for the heads up on the Mac and Unix thing. I didn't think of that. It will definitely be a consideration.

cgraz

Thanks for the heads up on the Mac and Unix thing. I didn't think of that. It will definitely be a consideration.

Well in a windows world, nobody considers anything else. And it's funny because if you think about it, the majority of web servers are linux. I heard even Microsoft uses linux (which wouldn't surprise me, linux is awesome), and it's open source just like php 😉

Anyways, that's a good idea but I don't see how you could get it to work. How would you get the files on their computer in the first place? Just curious.

Cgraz

NoFear

Originally posted by cgraz
Well in a windows world, nobody considers anything else. And it's funny because if you think about it, the majority of web servers are linux. I heard even Microsoft uses linux (which wouldn't surprise me, linux is awesome), and it's open source just like php 😉

Anyways, that's a good idea but I don't see how you could get it to work. How would you get the files on their computer in the first place? Just curious.

Cgraz

Users download compatible images from the our web site on their own free will and place them in the required directory. We're still toying with the idea, and we're confident that we can get it to work, though there will always be some unhappy people.

It's not necessarily that we wouldn't have considered alternate OS's, more just that we're taking everything a step at a time, and hadn't made it to that next step yet. =)
We'll make it work for the Unix and Mac community as well =)

Thanks for your very timely responses!