NAME
Apache::Album - Simple Perl Photo Album
SYNOPSIS
Add to your favorite apache .conf file (srm.conf)
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache::Album
# PerlSetVar AlbumDir /albums_loc
# PerlSetVar ThumbNailUse Width
# PerlSetVar ThumbNailWidth 100
# PerlSetVar ThumbNailAspect 2/11
# PerlSetVar DefaultBrowserWidth 640
# PerlSetVar OutsideTableBorder 0
# PerlSetVar InsideTablesBorder 0
# PerlSetVar BodyArgs BGCOLOR=white
# PerlSetVar Footer "Optional Footer Here"
ABSTRACT
This is a simple photo album. You simply copy some gif's/jpeg's
to a directory, create an optional text block (in a file called
caption.txt) to go at the top, and the module does the rest. It
does however require that PerlMagick be installed.
Default settings in the srm.conf file may be overriden by
creating a .htaccess file in the same directory as the image
files and the caption.txt file.
INSTALLATION
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install
(no test necessary)
DESCRIPTION
This module sets up a virtual set of photo albums starting at
the `Location' definition. This virtual directory is mapped to a
physical directory under `AlbumDir'. Under `AlbumDir' create a
sub-directory for each photo album, and copy image files into
each subdirectory. You must also make the permissions for each
subdirectory so that the id which runs Apache can write to the
directory.
At this point, if you have PerlMagick installed, you can go to
*http://your.site/albums/album_name* Apache::Album will create
thumbnails for each of the images, write the caption.txt file
along with the thumbnails to the client's browser. The
thumbnails are links to the full sized images.
The caption.txt file
The caption.txt file consists of two parts. The first part is
text/html, that will be placed at the top of the html
document. The second part of the file is a mapping of
filenames to captions. The module will do some simple mangling
of the image file names to create the caption. But if it finds
a mapping in the caption.txt file, that value is used instead.
The value __END__ signifies the end of the first section and
the beginning of the second.
For example:
Image -> Bob_and_Jenny.jpg
Caption -> Bob and Jenny (the auto-generated caption)
override in caption.txt
Bob_and_Jenny.jpg: This is me with my sister Jenny.
Here is a sample caption.txt file:
My Birthday Party
This is me at my Birthday Party!.
__END__
pieinface.gif: Here's me getting hit the face with a pie.
john5.jpg: This is John
ThumbNail Types
`ThumbNailUse' can either be set to "width" or "aspect". If
`ThumbNailUse' is set to "width", thumbnails that need to be
created will be `ThumbNailWidth' wide, and the height will be
modified to keep the same aspect as the original image.
If `ThumNailUse' is set to "aspect", thumbnails that need to
be created will be transformed by the value of
`ThumbNailAspect'. `ThumbNailAspect' can be either a floating
point number like 0.25 or it can be a ratio like 2 / 11.
If an image file is updated, the corresponding thumbnail file
will be updated the next time the page is accessed. In
practice I have found that Netscape will used the cached
images even if they are updated. I normally have to flush the
cache and reload to see the new images.
At any time you can `rm -f tn__*' in the
`AlbumDir'/album_name/ directory, the next time the page is
loaded all the thumbnails will be regenerated. (Naturally
image names that start with tn__ should be renamed before
placing them in the album directory.
DefaultBrowserWidth
A general number of how wide you want the final table to be,
not an absolute number. If the next image would take it past
this "invisible line", a new row is started.
BodyArgs
This entire string is passed in the tag. Useful for
setting background images, background color, link colors, etc.
If set in the srm.conf file, you must put quotes around the
value, and escape any quotes in the value. If this value is
set in the .htaccess file, this is not necessary:
In srm.conf: PerlSetVar BodyArgs "BACKGROUND=gray.gif text=\"#FFFFFF\""
In .htaccess: PerlSetVar BodyArgs BACKGROUND=gray.gif text="#FFFFFF"
OutsideTableBorder
This variable's value is passed to the outer table's BORDER
attribute.
InsideTablesBorder
This variables's value is passed to all the inner table's
BORDER attributes. Note that the name of the
`InnerTablesBorder' has an 's' in it, as it modifes all the
inner tables.
Footer
This text/html will placed at the bottom of the page after all
the thumbnails, but before the end of the page. Useful for
links back to a home page, mailto: tag, etc.
LIMITATIONS
PerlMagick is a limiting factor. If PerlMagick can't load the
image, no thumbnail will be created.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1998 Jim Woodgate. All rights reserved. This
program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the same terms as Perl itself.
AUTHOR
Jim Woodgate woody@bga.com
SEE ALSO
perl(1), the Image::Magick manpage(3).