PHP Gallery for Wedding Photography - What would you do?

[vcm]

I'm looking for some advice for a wedding photographers gallery. He wants all of the following:

• Personalised Login for each bride & Groom - (Will probably use webmin for this)
• Gallery image thumbnails auto generated
• Thumbnail loaded into main image box on click using javascript
• Bride can then add this image to shopping cart to order print, but various sizes will be available

The photographer will upload the images 001.jpg, 002.jpg etc. into a new directory for each bride and groom. Then create a login for the bride and grrom to access the photos. When the bride and groom login, they are automatically shown their photos, and can add them to a shopping cart and checkout using paypal.

How would you start looking at this project, or working out ideas for it? I dont want to use a database, just pull the images from the directory after login then add the required images to the shopping cart. Any ideas for an already available script, or where I would begin. I don't want a full script here, just any idea of the functions I would need to reaserch and use for this project.

Thanks,
VCM

[tconley79]

Hey there.

It sounds doable without a database.

Some features to consider...

--Photographer should be able to log in (seperate access level than couple, of course) and upload the images via a form. The images are resized on the fly and saved to a folder unique to the couple, e.g., "smith_jones_2007".

--Bride logs in and the program looks through the images in the photo directory. (though I'm not sure how it would know which folder to look in with just the bride's login and no database....)

--Each photo will have a form to select sizes an add the photo to the order. Each photo and it's sizes will be saved in a text file as she adds more photo's to the order.

--When the bride completes the order, the program reads from the textfile and gives a order confirmation summary. The bride then has a chance to give a brief message and submits the order to paypal (with the prices totaled and such).

That's my knee-jerk

[vcm]

Hey there.

It sounds doable without a database.

Some features to consider...

--Photographer should be able to log in (seperate access level than couple, of course) and upload the images via a form. The images are resized on the fly and saved to a folder unique to the couple, e.g., "smith_jones_2007".

--Bride logs in and the program looks through the images in the photo directory. (though I'm not sure how it would know which folder to look in with just the bride's login and no database....)

--Each photo will have a form to select sizes an add the photo to the order. Each photo and it's sizes will be saved in a text file as she adds more photo's to the order.

--When the bride completes the order, the program reads from the textfile and gives a order confirmation summary. The bride then has a chance to give a brief message and submits the order to paypal (with the prices totaled and such).

That's my knee-jerk

tconley79,
thanks for the reply. Yes, these features sound great. But do you have any idea how I might build the page, without using a databae (as was specifically requested)?

Would appreciate any pointers...
thanks

[omnibreak]

although this wont be stricktly useful if you set permissions on the seperate folders (the ones for the couples) php can search the folder get the list of the files etc. Then based on what it gets you can do what you want with them. Can display only files with thumb_ prefix at first then shows full image on click etc.

There was a gallery script based entirely using this method a while back. Not sure if a flat file was used, but dont think so.

EDIT Heres a link to a databaseless php album with user login and thumbnailing etc. http://www.phpalbum.net/ looks pretty good. No shopping cart but if you have a look at the code and see how they have done it shouldnt be too hard to do. Even perhaps just storing selected images in a session/cookie and then a checkout page. dunno your call

[beley]

You could always use SQLite database. It's a flat file and doesn't need any server-side db application to run.

I don't think a shopping cart is something you can do easily or well without using a database of some kind... even something as simple as ordering prints. You have multiple pieces of information that are associated with the product (image) like different print sizes, their prices, shipping costs, etc.

Then you have all the customer's order information, shipping information, etc.

For a simple photo gallery, sure. But for online ordering? It could be done, but I actually think it'd be easier to develop using a simple database like SQLite.