Using Imagecache on external images

Submitted by Josh on 6 March 2009 - 4:19pm

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Recently we rebuilt a site for a client that was using Flickr to host a whole slew of product images for his website. Now I know what you’re thinking. Hosting images for you website somewhere other than your Drupal install seems a little bit silly, your website now depends on your server being up and it also depends on Flickr’s servers being up. That being said, Flickr does provide quite an extensive API for accessing your images and it’s made even easier with Dan Coulter’s phpFlickr class.

Aside from this though, we wanted to be able push all of the product images through Imagecache in order that we could get consistently sized images for our page layouts.

For those of you that don’t know, Imagecache is a wonderful Drupal module that allows you to define image processing presets (ie scale, crop, colour shift plus lots more). The module then takes your image, processes it according to your preset, and then stores this new copy on the server ready to placed on the page when it is called. This allows you to do some neat things with images without having to upload multiple versions of the same image. You can assign an image an Imagecache preset in various places in the config or you can call it in your code like this:

print theme('imagecache', 'preset_namespace', $image_filepath, $alt, $title, $attributes);

However, herein lies the problem for us trying to use this on images that we have pulled in from Flickr. Imagecache does not allow you to run a preset on an external image, the image has to be inside your Drupal install. So this is where the fun starts.

We decided to write a function that would go out to Flickr and pull in our images and store them in a folder on our server. And it looks a little something like this:

(Read the inline comments for a basic explaination of what the code does)

function marmalade_helper_download_from_flickr($flickr_image_id) {
  $flickr = new phpFlickr('6a332a7d86cea24360a71dde09c22c71');
  $sizes = $flickr->photos_getSizes($flickr_image_id);
  $largest_available_size = array_pop($sizes);
  //Check if the containing folder exists -- if not, create it.
  $dir = file_create_path() .'/flickr-originals';
        if (!file_check_directory($dir)){
                mkdir($dir, 0775, true);
        }
  // Get the image from Flickr
  $url = $largest_available_size['source']; 
  //set up the local file name
  $ext = '.' . 'jpg'; // This should get everything after the last full-stop in the above $url, but hardcoding for now
  $src = file_create_path() . '/flickr-originals/' . $flickr_image_id . $ext;
        $result = drupal_http_request($url);
        $code = floor($result->code / 100) * 100;
        $types = array('image/jpeg', 'image/png', 'image/gif');
        if ($result->data && $code != 400 && $code != 500 && in_array($result->Content-Type, $types)) {
                $src = file_save_data($result->data, $src);
                return TRUE;
  }
        else {
                //if we are unsuccessful then log a message in the watchdog
                watchdog('flickr', 'The image '. $url . ' could not be retrieved');
                return FALSE;
        }
}

We then wrote a little wrapper function for the Imagecache call which basically checks if the image exists locally, if it doesn’t then it calls the marmalade_helper_download_from_flickr() to go and get it from Flickr. Once the image is down from Flickr, or if it was already there, it runs the Imagecache theme call.

function marmalade_helper_flickr_imagecache($flickr_image_id, $imagecache_preset) {
  $local_image_url = file_directory_path() . '/flickr-originals/' . $flickr_image_id . '.jpg';
  if (!file_exists($local_image_url)) {
    impact_helper_download_from_flickr($flickr_image_id);
  }
  if (file_exists($local_image_url)) {
    return theme('imagecache',$imagecache_preset, $local_image_url);
  }
  else {
    return '<span>Image could not be found</span>'; 
  }
}

We were then able to print an image on the page by calling this function. All we have to do is provide it with a Flickr image id and the Imagecache preset we want to use.

$image = marmalade_helper_flickr_imagecache($photo_id, 'product_page_large');
print $image;

I hope this helps someone :) Leave a comment and let us know what you think!!

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1.
$image = marmalade_helper_flickr_imagecache($photo_id, 'product_page_large');
2.
print $image;

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Got it working by installing Activity Stream

Submitted by Anonymous on 19 March 2010 - 11:29am.

Hi - just to let you know - it picked up the class when I installed the activity stream module. Still dont quite understand why Flickr API didn't work:

Am receiving a rather nasty error message now:

warning: array_pop() [function.array-pop]: The argument should be an array in /Users/ruski/Sites/Aquia/acquia-drupal/sites/all/themes/wilderness/template.php on line 472.

I fear it might be beyond me - this one, for now...

I am attempting to output a series of embedded images into a view block - that I am preprocessing because I need to change the alt att - for my javascript gallery to work...

Such is my preprocess:

function wilderness_preprocess_semanticviews_view_fields__apple_gallery__page_1(&$vars) {

$row = $vars['row'];

$photo_id = ($row->node_data_field_photo_url_field_photo_url_value);
$stuff = unserialize($row->node_data_field_photo_url_field_photo_url_data);
$imagetitle = $data['title'];

$vars['flickrfield'] = $image = wilderness_helper_flickr_imagecache($photo_id, 'apple-thumb', 'thumbnail', $imagetitle);

$vars['thumb'] = theme('imagecache', $namespace, $path, 'thumbnail', $title, $attributes);

}

meaning that I doctored your code to include the thumbnail argument:

function wilderness_helper_flickr_imagecache($flickr_image_id, $imagecache_preset, $alt, $title) { $local_image_url = file_directory_path() . '/flickr-originals/' . $flickr_image_id . '.jpg'; if (!file_exists($local_image_url)) { wilderness_helper_download_from_flickr($flickr_image_id); } if (file_exists($local_image_url)) { return theme('imagecache',$imagecache_preset, $local_image_url, $alt, $title, $attributes); } else { return 'Image could not be found'; } }

Many thanks for the kick start...

A problem

Submitted by Anonymous on 19 March 2010 - 10:58am.

Firstly I like the name of your site - now I've got that out the way...

Bit of a drupal noob and this is testing me to my limit! I am getting this error when implementing the code. I have pasted the functions into my template.php - inserting my key etc... but it can't seem to find the phpFlickr class :(

Fatal error: Class 'phpFlickr' not found in /Users/ruski/Sites/Aquia/acquia-drupal/sites/all/themes/wilderness/template.php on line 470

I have the flickr API installed and my keys and secret are installed. Inside the API directory sites a phpFlickr directory with the class in it.

I have aslo enabled the flickr module and placed it in their as well for good measure after getting this error...

Can you enlighten me?

You need to include the

Submitted by Josh (not verified) on 19 March 2010 - 11:15am.

You need to include the phpFlickr class by adding this to the top of your module:

require_once("phpflickr/phpFlickr.php");

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Typo??

Submitted by Anonymous on 15 October 2009 - 4:46am.

Line 4 of function marmalade_helper_flickr_imagecache

-> impact_helper_download_from_flickr($flickr_image_id);

I think should read:

-> marmalade_helper_download_from_flickr($flickr_image_id);

Not a big deal but it might throw some of your readers off.

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Submitted by Anonymous on 26 May 2009 - 12:42am.

This reminded me of a very similar situation last year where I tried to get the "local copy" functionality for Image Cache's sake into the Embedded Media Field module, which also utilises Flickr (amongst other things) as a possible source.

Hard to beat Flickr as an image manager, eh? Nice solution!

Useful!

Submitted by Anonymous on 30 March 2009 - 5:13am.

Hi guys! This is very useful, as I was looking into such functionality. I'm going to go through the code carefully, and was thinking of integrating it in the node creation/posting process, maybe with a CCK field, which takes a Flickr photo URL and then applies your magic on it!

Soroush < http://sorou.sh >

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