Uploading a picture from a URL?

Jsn7821

How can I upload an image from a URL submitted that is not on my server?

I have a page where people can post messages with images attached, and right now they can attach images on from their computer, but I want to let them post pictures from the internet too by just typing in the URL.

How do I make php get the picture, and upload it to my server?

thorpe

i wouldnt even bother uploading it to your server, just use the address provided and display it from there.

Jsn7821

Thats how I have it right now... but I want to upload it to my server for two reasons:
1: so im not leaching off someone elses bandwidth,
2: whenever someone posts an image from a slow server, my whole script pauses on getimagesize() and it makes the whole page not load for up to 20 seconds.

Jason_Batten

No I'd also like to know how to do this. Displaying an image on your site from another server is STEALING bandwidth! :glare:

thorpe

well then, if your on linux servers, im sure it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with a script using wget to grab the picture.

Weedpacket

PHP's file-reading functions (e.g., [man]file_get_contents[/man]) can work with URLS, too.

bradgrafelman

I don't see why you couldn't use file_get_contents() as suggested by Weed and then fwrite() the data to a file... both functions are binary-safe.

Jsn7821

I can't figure out how to make this work, I have tried a few things but nothings working.

I have the file contents by simply doing file_get_contents($image), where $image is the URL. I don't know what function to use to write this to my server, can fwrite make a new image file? From what I saw it is for adding to old files that you open. Can anyone help aim me in the right direction, thanks.

bradgrafelman

Read about the different modes of [man]fopen/man