[RESOLVED] Displaying Contextual Images

[Tim_Silva]

Hi all,

I currently have a site that prints out a random image from an images directory every time the user clicks a title link and a news article is shown. It works fine but now I would like to go 1 step further and contextualize the images. Meaning that if ['title'] has the word "boy" or "girl" or "children" it will echo a random image from directory.../images/children/ if ['title'] has the word "elderly" or "aged" or "senior" it will echo a random image from directory.../images/elderly/ and if ['title'] has neither one of these words or words from both groups it will echo a random image from a directory.../images/general/. Any hint will be appreciated. I am also open to suggestions. Thanks.

[Abarak]

Hi Tim,

The biggest problem I can see in your situation is having PHP determine what set of pictures to display based on the text contained within the title. PHP cannot relate "elderly" to "senior" unless you find some way of tying a thesaurus into the word search or creating an array which contains a predefined set of words. If you only display news articles that pertain to a specific set of categories then creating the array is your best bet. Integrating a thesaurus into a word search is something I have yet to accomplish or seen accomplished for that fact.

If you choose to go the static array route just create an array key that is the name of the picture directory and have the key contain another array with the set of words.

For example:

$aWords = array("elderly" => array("elderly", "aged", "senior"), "children" => array("children", "boy", "girl"));

On the page that is loading the random image explode the title based on a space and loop through the comparison array to see if the words match. If a match is found then randomly display a picture within the directory.

If you need assistance with the above just let me know,

[Tim_Silva]

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to reply.
The thesaurus idea is fantastic but it is way above my expertise. The array suggestion seems more viable in my case.

As you can see by the code below, what I have right now is very simple but works just fine. I just named each of the 50 images in the directory beginning with the name “picture” followed by a number (picture1.jpg, picture2.jpg …etc).

The problem is that sometimes the title in the news doesn’t match the image at all: “Pfizer Labs Discovers New Medication For Alzheimer’s, Great News For Elderly Americans.”. And the image that prints is that of a little boy. I would like to fix that. So I was thinking of creating different sub-directories within the image directory (elderly, children… etc). I just don’t know how I can get my code to determine what image to use based on certain words in the title.

Another option that just occurred to me is to name the images differently instead of placing them in different directory (elderly1.jpg, elderly2.jpg, children1.jpg, children2.jpg…)

Again, thanks very much for your help. In the future, when become as good as some of you I will return the favor.

Tim.

<?php
$hostname="myserver.net";
$username="myusername";
$password="mypass";
$dbname="mydb";
$usertable="mytable";
$num=rand(1,50);

mysql_connect($hostname,$username,$password) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("$dbname") or die(mysql_error());

$data = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $usertable")
or die(mysql_error());
$info = mysql_fetch_array( $data );

echo $info['title'];
echo "<img src=images/picture$num.jpg align=left>";
echo nl2br($info['article']);
?>

[leatherback]

Tim,

The way you name / store the images is at the moment not a big concern (I personally would chuck them all in a folder, and have a table with all their specifications). However, the logic is.

As you mention, 'how to know which image to display' is really tricky. Say I have a title "New drug excites young people but does not work for elderly". What image to display? There is a lot more at work here than just finding synonymes. The best solution would be to ask the user which image to display, or at least to check a category, in my opinion.

[Tim_Silva]

Leatherback, Chad, at al,

I was thinking that maybe the solution could be a conditional statement (if else). What if I simplify the procedure and limit the choices to only two image directories, “general”and “children”. So that if [‘title’] has NO word related to children it will echo a random image from …images/general/ but if it DOES it will echo a random image from …images/children/.

In order to determine if words such as “children, child, boy, girl…) is in [‘title’] should I use LIKE operator? And if so, can you help me with that based on my existing code (posted above)?

Thanks again.

Tim

[Abarak]

Tim,

As Leatherback stated we should be more worried about determining which picture to correctly display. Allowing the user to select which set of images to display would be the best course of action but from what I understand, this is not an option.

Going with the static array idea I came up with the following UNTESTED code:

// Define the boy and girl comparison array
// Words taken from the following URL's:
//     http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/girl
//     http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/boy

$aBoy = array("buck", "cadet", "chap", "child", "chip", "dude", "fellow", "gamin", "guy", "half-pint", "junior", "lad", "little guy", "master", "punk", "puppy", "runt", "schoolboy", "shaveling", "shaver", "small fry", "sonny", "sprout", "squirt", "stripling", "tadpole", "whippersnapper", "youngster", "youth");

$aGirl = array("babe", "baby doll", "bird", "blonde", "bobby-soxer", "boytoy", "broad", "butterfly", "canary", "chick", "coed", "cupcake", "cutie", "dame", "damsel", "daughter", "deb", "debutante", "doll", "female", "filly", "gal", "jail bait", "lady", "lassie", "mademoiselle", "maid", "maiden", "minx", "miss", "missy", "mouse", "nymph", "nymphet", "piece", "queen", "schoolgirl", "she", "sis", "skirt", "spring chicken", "teenybopper", "tomato", "tomboy", "virgin", "wench", "witch", "woman");

// Break up the title so we can search through each word
$aTitle = explode(" ", $info['title']);

// Define the default value
$bFound = false;

// Random image number
$num=rand(1,50);

// Go through each word in the title and see if the word is found
// within the boy and girl array.
foreach($aTitle as $sWord) {
    if(in_array($sWord, $aBoy) || in_array($sWord, $aGirl)) {
        $bFound = true;
        break;
    }
}

// If the word is found then we know we have to display a children
// based image or just a general one
if($bFound)
    echo "<img src=images/children/picture$num.jpg align=left>";
else
    echo "<img src=images/general/picture$num.jpg align=left>";

This should get you started without having to programmatically implement a thesaurus. Granted, you will have to add/remove words from the search arrays.

[Tim_Silva]

Chad,

I am speechless (and that's a hard thing to happen). Your code worked flawlessly, first try. Wow.

My plan now is to work in the code you wrote and try to get it to work even more specifically (images for teenagers, doctors, women, men... etc). Although I know it would be trickier because I will be dealing with multiple possibilities and not just two.

Maybe one day I will be able to pay you back.

Thanks a bunch dude.

Tim

[bradgrafelman]

Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.