Random image Script, and passing parameters in HTML

[gratty]

I'm pretty new to PHP so bear with me  ,

I've been looking for a PHP script that I can use to randomly display images. However, I have a large amount of directories (over 100) that contain these images, and I need to be able to pass parameters to the PHP script based on the content, to ensure that I get images from the correct directory. For example, if I'm posting content about tigers and I want to post a tiger picture, then I'd point the script to images/animals/tigers. I've found a lot of scripts that can display images from a single directory, but none that provide the sort of flexability that I need. Additionally, I need the script to be able to be called from outside of an HTML document, so if I needed to call an image, I could do something like the following:

 <img src=(Random.php getRandomImage($directory)) alt = "Random Image" />

 

Is this possible at all? I found a script that could do this before, but it had a header() return, and I need to display six images, while the header only is able to return one. Would it be possible to adjust this following code to meet these requirements?

 

<?php
/*
By Matt Mullenweg > http://photomatt.net
Inspired by Dan Benjamin > http://hiveware.com/imagerotator.php
Latest version always at:
http://photomatt.net/scripts/randomimage
*/// Make this the relative path to the images, like "../img" or "random/images/".
// If the images are in the same directory, leave it blank.
$folder = '';

// Space seperated list of extensions, you probably won't have to change this.
$exts = 'jpg jpeg png gif';

$files = array(); $i = -1; // Initialize some variables
if ('' == $folder) $folder = './';

$handle = opendir($folder);
$exts = explode(' ', $exts);
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
foreach($exts as $ext) { // for each extension check the extension
if (preg_match('/\.'.$ext.'$/i', $file, $test)) { // faster than ereg, case insensitive
$files[] = $file; // it’s good
++$i;
}
}
}
closedir($handle); // We’re not using it anymore
mt_srand((double)microtime()*1000000); // seed for PHP < 4.2
$rand = mt_rand(0, $i); // $i was incremented as we went along
header('Location: '.$folder.$files[$rand]); // Voila!
?>

 

 

 

Could anyone point me in the right direction?

[schilly]

well for one, if you need to display 6 images you won't be able to do:

<img src=(Random.php getRandomImage($directory)) alt = "Random Image" />

 

i would suggest making an image creation function that takes in your directories:

<?php
function createImage($dir,$subdir){
// create the image from a random image from the provided directory structure
// set your headers to tell the browser an image is coming then output the image data
}
createImage($_GET['dir'],$_GET['subdir']);
?>

then call it by doing

<img src='createImage.php?dir=animals&subdir=tigers'>

 

something like that should work.

 

if you want 6 images i would grab 6 images randomly then format it in whatever html you need then output that. you wont be able to use it as an image source though.