Images from database - help me!

suzza

Helloooo

I have a series of images in my database, they are alpha-numerical codes for the sake of email sending verification. I want users to copy the code from the image into the text box correctly before their message gets sent via a website (to reduce the auto spam)

I got the images into the db ok, and can display them at random in the middle of my html by calling in a separate php page.

html page:

<img src='image.php' />
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="<?php 'id from image.php ?>" />
enter code: <input type="text" name="code" />

image.php page:

$sql = "select image from table order by rand()";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
header("Content-type: image/png");
print $row[image];

trouble is i need to pass the image id across into the html page aswell so that when the form is submitted the code can compare the id with what the user typed in.

Hope someone understands and can help me, please :o

autocolismo

$sql = "select * from table order by rand()";
print $row['id'];
???

bradgrafelman

I would instead add something like this to your html page:

<?php
$query = 'SELECT MAX(id) FROM table LIMIT 1';
$exec = mysql_query($query);
$id = mt_rand(1, mysql_result($exec, 0));
?>
<img src="image.php?id=<?php echo $id; ?>" alt="Random text generator" />
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="<?php echo $id; ?>" />

Then, you'd modify your image.php script a bit:

$id = (isset($_GET['id']) ? intval($_GET['id']) : 1);
$query = "SELECT image FROM table WHERE id >= $id LIMIT 1";

Why? Well, obviously, this solves the problem of the HTML page somehow figuring out what ID the image.php script chose.

Furthermore, this gets rid of the ORDER BY RAND() in your query. This type of ordering statement shouldn't be used (okay, there are exceptions, but for 95% of the time...) since it isn't scalable. There's a topic in this forum regarding this bad coding habit if you're interested in more information.

sidsel

I would save the image ID in a session as a hidden field is only hidden when viewed in a browser.