Creating an image without storing it as a local file

Question

Here\'s my situation - I want to create a resized jpeg image from a user uploaded image, and then send it to S3 for storage, but am looking to avoid writing the resized jpeg

Answer 1

Most people using PHP choose either ImageMagick or Gd2

I've never used Imagemagick; the Gd2 method:

<?php

// assuming your uploaded file was 'userFileName'

if ( ! is_uploaded_file(validateFilePath($_FILES[$userFileName]['tmp_name'])) ) {
    trigger_error('not an uploaded file', E_USER_ERROR);
}
$srcImage = imagecreatefromjpeg( $_FILES[$userFileName]['tmp_name'] );

// Resize your image (copy from srcImage to dstImage)
imagecopyresampled($dstImage, $srcImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, RESIZED_IMAGE_WIDTH, RESIZED_IMAGE_HEIGHT, imagesx($srcImage), imagesy($srcImage));

// Storing your resized image in a variable
ob_start(); // start a new output buffer
  imagejpeg( $dstImage, NULL, JPEG_QUALITY);
  $resizedJpegData = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean(); // stop this output buffer

// free up unused memmory (if images are expected to be large)
unset($srcImage);
unset($dstImage);

// your resized jpeg data is now in $resizedJpegData
// Use your Undesigned method calls to store the data.

// (Many people want to send it as a Hex stream to the DB:)
$dbHandle->storeResizedImage( $resizedJpegData );
?>

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This can be done using the GD library and output buffering. I don't know how efficient this is compared with other methods, but it doesn't require explicit creation of files.

//$image contains the GD image resource you want to store

ob_start();
imagejpeg($image);
$jpeg_file_contents = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();

//now send $jpeg_file_contents to S3