gd functions! Is there anyway to produce and image display an image withou saving it?

[ikeo]

Right now this is what I'm doing ....

 #Load the orginal image
 $source_image = imagecreatefrompng('../images/captcha.png');
 #Get a color and allocate to the image pallet
 $color = imagecolorallocate($source_image, 100, 100, 100);
 # The text to draw
 $text = randomkeys(4);
 $no_cache = randomkeys(8);
 # Replace path by your own font path
 $font = 'georgiab.ttf';
 #Add the text
 imagettftext($source_image, 20, 0, 35, 30, $color, $font, $text);
 #Write image to file
 $true = imagepng($source_image, '../images/tester.png');
 #clean out the memory reserved for the image
 if($source_image)
 {
     imagedestroy($source_image);
 } 

... but I want to know if there is a way to display the image on an html page
without first saving it to a file?

[vedeney]

header('Content-Type: image/png');
imagepng($source_image);

Hm... why are you saving it?

[ikeo]

I've tried that before and it won't work if I put it in an html page.
It just spits out gobbledy gook ..

[onion2k]

Originally Posted by ikeo

I've tried that before and it won't work if I put it in an html page.
It just spits out gobbledy gook ..

Have you tried opening a PNG file, copying the binary data, and putting that in an HTML page? Coz that's effectively what you're doing when you call imagepng() in the middle of HTML output.

What you need to do is create a script that ONLY outputs an image, and then call it using <img src="myimage.php"> in your HTML.

[ikeo]

thanks onion2k,
The approach in the code I posted works for me, but I was hoping I could just assign the image I created to .... say

$image

and then use that as a surrogate image file.

so maybe what I want isn't possible ...
Thanks for the help.

[Dan Grossman]

No, doesn't make sense in the context of how webpages work. You either need to write it to a file and write out an <img> tag pointing to that new file, or write an <img> tag pointing to a PHP script which outputs the new image.

SitePoint has a tutorial on CAPTCHA scripts too. A search for "security image" may bring it up.

[siteguru]

The fundamental issue here is as Dan pointed out - an image is just a collection of binary data. When you put an image in a web page, you don't actually put the image there, you put a link/pointer to the image then the browser follows that link, fetches the image and displays it.

If PHP is to create the image then the process is no different - you put the link/pointer to the PHP file in the web page. The only difference is that instead of an actual physical image being fetched by the browser, it fetches the output of that PHP file (with the appropriate header() info).