[RESOLVED] Image gallery with thumbnails and 'previous | next' links

[ali_p]

Hi,

I am creating an image gallery where i have thumbnails of all the images set in a iframe and the main picture when clicked apprearing in another larger iframe. All this is working fine and i'm happy.
However i would like to include a previous and next link on my page as well that the user can use to navigate through to next next image this way as well.

All my image names are stored in a mysql database and have a position number that is unique to them. I have tried to use a pagination script however i think this is not suitable as i am only displaying one large image on the page at a time.

I keep going around in circles but can't place my finger on what it is exactly that i need to do.

If anyone has created suc a image gallery and have a found a solution, i would really appreciate your help.

Thanks

[obsidian]

i did something similar for a gallery view once, and i simply pulled all the images for a given category into an array ordered by the "order" field in the database. with that in mind, i simply passed the next or previous key in the array through the URL which then told the page which image to display.

hope this helps

[ali_p]

Yes i have it now, thanks for helping me think straight. i was getting way too complicated thinking along pagination lines.

What i have done is , like you said, pulled all the images out in a seperate query, created variables called first_image last_image and used this to pass the next value to show the correct images.

Simple and effective.

Thanks

[dschreck]

I've literally done about 5 different ways of creating a "pager" system for galleries. The easiest way I've found, and the most effeicent, is simply determining how many thumbnails you want to display per page, and create a page system.

First thing first, you decide what page they're already on, using the $_GET['page'] or something of the like, I don't use dynamic URI's for SEO reasons, but that's basically how it's done.
If the user isn't on a page, start them at page 1, gather the first batch of images, and the 'next' link will have page 2 in it, and previous will link them to the highest page possible. this goes as:

$total = ceil($totalRows / $perPage); 
// example on paper:
/*
   8 =  @ 23 / 3  

            ( 23 / 3 = 7 1/6, rounded up, equals 8)
*/ 

So that means we have 8 pages. Go to page 8, and we get the last remaining images in the DB. Go to the 2nd page, and it gets the next 3 images. Really it's just changing the offSet in your MySQL Query.
Example:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM myimages ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT $offSet,$totalPerPage);

$offSet is how many rows to skip
and $totalPerPage is how many to actually get.

hope this helps.