Two questions re: image thumbnails

Pikachu2000

First, is there a way to dynamically generate thumbnails for display as a result of a search query, without having to store them on the server?

Second, if there is a way to do that, is it still better to simply generate the thumbnails and store them in a /thumbs directory when the image is uploaded, then have the results page call them later?

Storage space isn't an issue, so I guess my question boils down to whether it is too resource intensive to generate thumbnails every time a user makes a search query. Both GD and Image::Magick are available on the server.

dalecosp

Pikachu2000 wrote:
First, is there a way to dynamically generate thumbnails for display as a result of a search query, without having to store them on the server?

Second, if there is a way to do that, is it still better to simply generate the thumbnails and store them in a /thumbs directory when the image is uploaded, then have the results page call them later?

Storage space isn't an issue, so I guess my question boils down to whether it is too resource intensive to generate thumbnails every time a user makes a search query. Both GD and Image::Magick are available on the server.

First, yes.

Second, maybe. Expected traffic and server "muscle" might determine the answer for you.

Third, and you didn't ask, you might even "fake" it by simply getting the image details (see, for example [man]getimagesize/man and dividing by some small integer, then using these for "width" and "height" attributes in the (x)html. Might depend on how good you want the "thumbs" to look....

Pikachu2000

Thanks.

Weedpacket

Pikachu2000 wrote:
whether it is too resource intensive to generate thumbnails every time a user makes a search query.

Obviously, generating the same thumbnail multiple times (once for every query) is going to be more resource-intensive than generating it once and once only. So the question is how likely it will be that a given thumbnail will be viewed once. If it's not very likely at all, then it's largely a waste of time to generate it. Judgement call on your part, there. A tradeoff might be to generate the thumbnail the first time it's asked for, but then save it so that it's ready for the next request (if there is one). You'd be free later to delete thumbnails from the disk (or leave them out of your backup schedule), because any that are missing would just get regenerated.

My personal rule of thumb says that storage is cheap and mentions that the cost of time is going up. If you do generate them dynamically, keep in mind that while you're doing so your user is going to be sitting there waiting, which is where the server muscle dalecosp mentioned comes in.