dynamic images on external site

[PHPLemming]

hi
what I am trying to achieve is something similar to ICQ web status indicator.

I want people to be able to have an icon on their homepages that dynamically changes depending on data held in my database.

So I will give them
<img src="http://a.com/online?id=1">

Does anyone know how this is done? Can it be done in PHP? What kind of control do I need over the server environment?

Cheers

[Shrike]

umm

if($dbstate == 1){
$img = "on.gif";
}else{
$img = "off.gif";
}

echo "<img src=\"".$img."\">";

If you need the browser to update without any interaction you'd need a meta refresh in the page.

Hmm, or do you mean that completely different websites to yours have the icon? If so then you would need their webserver to allow server-side includes and put a URL to your script in place of the image, and your script would return the correct image depending on database values. I guess this also means that PHP needs to run as CGI. Ho-hum.

[PHPLemming]

Thanks for the reply Shrike.

Just to clarify I want people to be able to add some code their webpage hosted out of my control, which would allow a possibly different image to be displayed when the page is viewed, dependant on a value in my database.

Not really up on CGI, so it looks as though I'm about to learn something new, ah well, such is life.

Cheers

PHPLemming

[mattsinclair]

Check out the GD lib. You can create a dynamic image using it. Just set the headers to be an image (the PHP man page shows you how to do this).