Having trouble flushing and getting rid of waste.

Phrank

I have a script that displays an image from a file on the server. When done I want to delete the file.

Here is my code:

<?
echo "<br><img src=" . $filename . ">";
unlink($filename);
?>

If I run this I get an empty image displayed. If I comment out the unlink it works fine.

Tried to dump buffers with

ob_end_flush();

which gives me an error.

Not sure how to make sure the image displays and then delete the image from the temp dir.

I am using the time() function to create the tmp filename.

<?
$FileExtension = "TXT";
if (stristr($TheImageType, 'jpeg')) {
$FileExtension = "JPG";
}

$filename = "MyImages/" . time() . "." . $FileExtension;
?>

Works well but cannot delete the file.

Any ideas?

TIA

Frank

bretticus

Not quite sure I understand what you're attempting to do here (might be insightful) but you might wanna try dumping cache and then (without writing to the cache again) do your unlink.

Hmmm...I guess you're rendering images for a one-time download perhaps???

Phrank

I have images in a MySql db. I am having a heck of a problem with displaying them from the db. I find that if I write them to disk first and then display them it works great.

Problem I have is deleting the temp file after displaying the image from it.

How does one 'dump the cache' or 'clear the buffer'?

Not sure how to do this.

ob_end_flush(); give me an error.

Thanks 🙂

bretticus

try ob_flush() after showing the image and make sure you write nothing to the browser after you call it (i.e. you should be able to run commands after like your unlink command, etc.)

bretticus

Ah, I see! (bit more awake today) You are deleting the image before the browser can download it. I would set up a cron job to clean up your image temp foldr every 30 minutes or so instead (I woudl use the find command also to ensure you do not delete a image file that has barely been rendered.) This all depends, of course, if you have Linux as the OS here. If it's MS Windows instead, write a batch or vbscript and use scheduler to run it (I know VBScript well enough for the date compare if you need to know)

bretticus

Actually, if you really want to pull the images out of your database (if you must ;-), you need a php script that only shows the image contents:

<img src="showImage.php?id=1207">

in the showImage.php simply print out the image contents to the browser. The trick is, you'll need to manipulate the header so that the browser can determine the file type it is downloading (in this case an image.)

Header("Content-Type: image/gif");
//or...
Header("Content-Type: image/jpeg");

Phrank

I used a showimage.php and passed the ImageID like your 1207. Worked great on my pc running XP Pro and IIS. Could never get the same exact script to work on the web server running some unix os with apache.

I take the 1207 and open the db and get the image in a var. I send nothing to the web browser as far as I know and I do the Header command. I am using just jpegs for now. Thus

Header("Content-Type: image/jpeg");

is what I use followed by

echo $data["Image"];

as I say this works great on my pc but on the web server - now matter how I dress it - it gives me and Icon instead of the image.

If I save the var to a file on the disk - on the web server - and then display it from there it works great on the web server and my pc.

Am lost as to why.

Been pulling my hair out over this one.

Thanks for your help.

Frank

bretticus

I suggest you install this tool and compare the HTTP headers from IIS to Apache and see what the difference is. Apache may be writing headers that your browser cannot intepret?? I would look for a good tutorial. I'm telling you this off the top of my head (actually, my experience is from ASP.NET in this arena.) So I have not tested any of this in PHP. Also, I recommend looking at real headers from the server for jpg's to compare as well.

Good luck!

Phrank

Good advice. I will get to it tomorrow and see what the diff. is.

Thanks for your help.

bretticus

Just off the top of my head I am thinking maybe in Apache, you'll need to add a content-length header. Food for thought ;-)