Can anyone recommend a CGI (or other) server side application for managing images (and possibly text documents)?
What I want is a very simple way to be able to navigate a hierarchy of directories with photos in them without having to (re)write HTML whenever pictures are added or moved around. The directory hierarchy will provide all the indexing I want.
E.G. I want a directory hierachy on my web server with the top level directory called, say, "pictures". I will then create subdirectories under "pictures" such as "dogs", "horses", "housesInFrance", etc. I want the server side script to enable me to navigate the directories easily, so when I go to http://www.my.server/pictures I would expect to automatically see a link to "dogs", and if I navigto "dogs" I want to see the pictures that are in that directory.
Thinking about it I doubt if this can be done dynamically but a script to autogenerate all the required linking HTML would be OK, it can be run whenever the picture hierarchy is changed.
I suppose even more wonderful would be a way to 'drop' images and such onto a web page and they will be FTPed up to the server and added to the phot album - however that does seem a little too good to be true.
On Thu, Jan 15, 2004 at 04:09:15PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a CGI (or other) server side application for managing images (and possibly text documents)?
What I want is a very simple way to be able to navigate a hierarchy of directories with photos in them without having to (re)write HTML whenever pictures are added or moved around. The directory hierarchy will provide all the indexing I want.
Sounds like what you want is a photo gallery... so, there's a few choices...
(1) galrey - smallish perl program, generates the static pages and links etc, not sure how well it goes across multiple directories...
(2) gallery - largeish php app that does all manner of nice things for you - take a look at http://gallery.menalto.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=ind...
Cheers, Brett Parker
On 15 Jan 2004, at 16:30, Brett Parker wrote:
(1) galrey - smallish perl program, generates the static pages and links etc, not sure how well it goes across multiple directories...
I played around with that ages ago. It is a nice tool but at the end of the day, it wasn't what I wanted. Until.....
(2) gallery - largeish php app that does all manner of nice things for you - take a look at http://gallery.menalto.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=ind...
I used this ;) (Oh it is quicker if you type http://gallery.sf.net ;) I found this software is much better to use. It is pretty straightforward =)
C
On Thursday 15 January 2004 16:09, Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a CGI (or other) server side application for managing images (and possibly text documents)?
What I want is a very simple way to be able to navigate a hierarchy of directories with photos in them without having to (re)write HTML whenever pictures are added or moved around. The directory hierarchy will provide all the indexing I want.
E.G. I want a directory hierachy on my web server with the top level directory called, say, "pictures". I will then create subdirectories under "pictures" such as "dogs", "horses", "housesInFrance", etc. I want the server side script to enable me to navigate the directories easily, so when I go to http://www.my.server/pictures I would expect to automatically see a link to "dogs", and if I navigto "dogs" I want to see the pictures that are in that directory.
Thinking about it I doubt if this can be done dynamically but a script to autogenerate all the required linking HTML would be OK, it can be run whenever the picture hierarchy is changed.
I suppose even more wonderful would be a way to 'drop' images and such onto a web page and they will be FTPed up to the server and added to the phot album - however that does seem a little too good to be true.
If the Gallery program referred to by Brett - or a similar product - doesn't do the job you could roll your own, assuming you're not averse to some programming. Having been banging around in this area for some time I can offer the following comments. Apologies if I'm telling Granny how to suck eggs:
1. Server side programming requires the permission of the owner of the server. No ISP will allow you to run anything you like in case it takes down other users. If you have your own machine with a permanent connection you have free rein.
2. Pictures for viewing in a browser are a different animal to what comes out of your digital camera. We're talking about a 50k VGA JPEG in the one case and 4 MB (or more) in the other. And there's little point in uploading a huge picture to the server if you only ever want to see it in VGA size.
3. It takes time - lots of it on a 56k dialup - to upload big images. The process takes so long that if you simply send a large POST a browser like Internet Explorer will time out before the transfer finishes (can't speak for Linux browsers). Anyway, it also takes the same time to download for viewing. So I abandoned that some while back.
4. Keeping the pictures on a server is one thing, but categorising them makes the whole thing a lot more useful. This suggests having a database on the backend. Not difficult to do but requires careful thought.
5. FWIW, my preferred solution is not to use a browser but to have a client-side application that manages the images it finds on your hard drive, processes them ready for viewing and upload, and interacts with a server-side application (using standard HTTP) to do the publishing for others to view. A minor advantage is your originals never go near the web server - some people are fussy about that kind of thing.
6. Naturally, I have a system half-built. If you are interested contact me off-list.
-- GT
On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 11:59:59AM +0000, Graham Trott wrote:
On Thursday 15 January 2004 16:09, Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a CGI (or other) server side application for managing images (and possibly text documents)?
What I want is a very simple way to be able to navigate a hierarchy of directories with photos in them without having to (re)write HTML whenever pictures are added or moved around. The directory hierarchy will provide all the indexing I want.
E.G. I want a directory hierachy on my web server with the top level directory called, say, "pictures". I will then create subdirectories under "pictures" such as "dogs", "horses", "housesInFrance", etc. I want the server side script to enable me to navigate the directories easily, so when I go to http://www.my.server/pictures I would expect to automatically see a link to "dogs", and if I navigto "dogs" I want to see the pictures that are in that directory.
Thinking about it I doubt if this can be done dynamically but a script to autogenerate all the required linking HTML would be OK, it can be run whenever the picture hierarchy is changed.
I suppose even more wonderful would be a way to 'drop' images and such onto a web page and they will be FTPed up to the server and added to the phot album - however that does seem a little too good to be true.
If the Gallery program referred to by Brett - or a similar product - doesn't do the job you could roll your own, assuming you're not averse to some programming. Having been banging around in this area for some time I can offer the following comments. Apologies if I'm telling Granny how to suck eggs:
I've taken a look at Gallery and it seems to be along the lines of what I want.
- Server side programming requires the permission of the owner of the server.
No ISP will allow you to run anything you like in case it takes down other users. If you have your own machine with a permanent connection you have free rein.
PlusNet are pretty close to giving free rein, I was pleasantly surprised to find that you really do get a Linux shell login and a basically unlimited user account. I must admit there are very few other ISPs that offer so much freedom though.
I already have hosting set up for my Ltd. company (I used to be a contractor) and there too I have a Linux shell login and full freedom to do what I want. I had hoped to set up Gallery on PlusNet to take advantage of their 250Mb free web space but that 250Mb isn't on the same system as the CGI/shell access where you only have 50Mb to play with. Thus I may put Gallery on my own web site.
- Pictures for viewing in a browser are a different animal to what comes out
of your digital camera. We're talking about a 50k VGA JPEG in the one case and 4 MB (or more) in the other. And there's little point in uploading a huge picture to the server if you only ever want to see it in VGA size.
Yes, quite, I'm still going to need quite a bit of space though as I want to make lots of house pictures available to enhance our French house hunting.
- It takes time - lots of it on a 56k dialup - to upload big images. The
process takes so long that if you simply send a large POST a browser like Internet Explorer will time out before the transfer finishes (can't speak for Linux browsers). Anyway, it also takes the same time to download for viewing. So I abandoned that some while back.
I have 128k ISDN (no broadband where I live) so large files are bearable (if not exactly jet propelled). We also have a fast connection at work and I can do really big up/downloads from there overnight if I want. I downloaded the Slackware ISOs recently for example and burnt them onto CDs at work.
- Keeping the pictures on a server is one thing, but categorising them makes
the whole thing a lot more useful. This suggests having a database on the backend. Not difficult to do but requires careful thought.
Yes, but it's sort of what I'm trying to avoid. I want a trivially simple system driven only by the directory hierarchy to organise it. E.g. the top level directory will be called FranceHouses, the next level down will have Departement names as directory names, then the next level will be Estate Agent names and under each estate agent will be a list of places/properties. I'm trying to minimise the overheads as otherwise it simply won't be used or useful.
- FWIW, my preferred solution is not to use a browser but to have a
client-side application that manages the images it finds on your hard drive, processes them ready for viewing and upload, and interacts with a server-side application (using standard HTTP) to do the publishing for others to view. A minor advantage is your originals never go near the web server - some people are fussy about that kind of thing.
You mean have an application that builds the web pages and HTML locally? Then upload them as a 'ready made' web hierarchy?
- Naturally, I have a system half-built. If you are interested contact me
off-list.
I could be, I'll se how I get on with Gallery and I need to decide where I'm going to put this too.
-
Brett Parker -
Chris Green -
Craig -
Graham Trott