[MASON] Using GD for dynamic graphics
Hi I would like to add some dynamic generated graphics to my site and find GD being the one to use. However I'm not sure _how_ to use it on my pages. I use HTML::Mason for content management and I am very happy and truly amazed of the powers in Mason, but when I tried adding some GD it got me puzzled. When I create a new GD::Image drawing whatever on it and trying to print it - it will be prepended to my html header for the page. I then tried to put it in $m-out to have in printed within Mason, but that simply printed the raw PNG in all its glory as text on screen. I tried fiddeling with content_type, but I guess that wont work if I set this after I have already printed something on the page - hence the content_type will not even be effective for that page. What I still miss doing/trying is making a seperate file/component which only job will be to make the PNG, but I don't really see what I would gain from that, because that will pretty much also just print a PNG within my HTML page. Like: html head /head body Some standard html text... %perl $m-content_type( image/png ); #my Mason/perl code for creating an image with GD. my $image = GD::Image(); #put something on image... been using both clean GD synopsis and some home cooked small widgets. print $image-png; #or $m-out( $image-png ); #or $r-print( $image-png ); $m-content_type( text/html ); /%perl Some more html text. /body /html Very simplified, but I don't have my code in front of me - sorry. I would assume that content_type in only good for setting in the header, but I don't see how I can mix in this PNG then. If GD could virtualle create a file I guess img src=% $image-png % would work... but that seems like a long shot when reading the man for GD :) Any help/hints will be greatly appriciate. Maybe I just need to look harder for more ressources, but I've already spent a lot of time on something that looks quite simple - but haven't shown results yet. Best regards Nicolai Schlenzig nicolai.schlenzig(at)got2get.net
Re: [MASON] Using GD for dynamic graphics
On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, Nicolai Schlenzig wrote: When I create a new GD::Image drawing whatever on it and trying to print it - it will be prepended to my html header for the page. I then tried to put it in $m-out to have in printed within Mason, but that simply printed the raw PNG in all its glory as text on screen. I tried fiddeling with content_type, but I guess that wont work if I set this after I have already printed something on the page - hence the content_type will not even be effective for that page. What I still miss doing/trying is making a seperate file/component which only job will be to make the PNG, but I don't really see what I would gain from that, because that will pretty much also just print a PNG within my HTML page. First of all, there's a mason users list (http://www.masonhq.com/resources/mailing_lists.html). Second, you don't seem to understand how images in a web page works. When your browser sees img src=foo it makes a _seperate_ request for foo from the web server. The image is not somehow magically inlined in the page and served with the request for the page itself. What you need is a seperate top-level Mason component that generates the image. Use this as the value for the src attribute like img src=foo.comp?size=2. Then make sure that foo.comp prints the correct headers. And yes, you need to use $m-out, not print (this is documented in the Mason docs). /*== www.urth.org we await the New Sun ==*/
