NAME
HTML::PhotoAlbum - Create web photo albums and slideshows
SYNOPSIS
use HTML::PhotoAlbum;
# Create a new album object, specifying the albums we have
my $album = HTML::PhotoAlbum->new(
albums => {
sf_trip => 'San Francisco Trip',
sjc_vac => 'San Jose Vacation',
puppy_1 => 'Puppy - First Week',
puppy_2 => 'Puppy - Second Week'
}
);
# By using the "selected" method, we can change what each one
# looks like. However, note these if statements are optional!
if ($album->selected eq 'sf_trip') {
print $album->render(
header => 1,
eachrow => 3,
eachpage => 12
);
} elsif ($album->selected eq 'sjc_vac') {
print $album->render(
header => 1,
eachrow => 5,
eachpage => 20,
font_face => 'times'
body_bgcolor => 'silver',
);
} else {
# Standard album just uses the defaults
# You can leave out the if's above and just use this
print $album->render(header => 1);
}
REQUIREMENTS
This module requires CGI::FormBuilder 3.0 or later.
DESCRIPTION
Admittedly a somewhat special-purpose module, this is designed to
dynamically create and display a photo album. Actually, it manages
multiple photo albums, each of which can be independently formatted and
navigated.
Basic usage of this module amounts to the examples shown above. This
module supports table-based thumbnail pages, auto-pagination, and
slideshows. The HTML produced is fully-customizable. It should be all
you need for creating online photo albums (besides the pictures, of
course).
The directory structure of a basic album looks like this:
albums/
index.cgi (your script)
hawaii_trip/
captions.txt (optional)
intro.html (optional)
image001.jpg
image001.sm.jpg
image002.gif
image002-mini.jpg
pict0003.jpeg
pict0003.sm.png
dsc00004.png
dsc00004.thumb.gif
xmas_2001/
captions.txt
pic0001.jpg
pic0001.sm.jpg
pic0002.jpg
pic0002.sm.jpg
pic0004.png
pic0004.mini.png
You'll probably end up choosing just one naming scheme for your images,
but the point is that "HTML::PhotoAlbum" is flexible enough to handle
all of them or any combination thereof. What happens is that the module
looks in the dir that you specify and does an ASCII sort on the files.
Anything that looks like a valid web image (ends in ".jpe?g", ".gif", or
".png") will be indexed and displayed. Then, it does basenames on the
images and looks for their thumbnails, if present. If there are no
thumbnails you get a generic link that says "Image 4" or whatever.
An optional "captions.txt" file can be included in the directory as
well. If this file is present, you can specify captions that will be
placed beneath each of the images. For example:
# Sample captions.txt file
image001 Us atop Haleakala
image002 Sunset from Maui
pict0003 Hiking on Kauai
dsc00004 Snorkeling on Hawaii
Also, if the optional "intro.html" file is present in the directory,
then that will be shown as the first page, with a link at the bottom
that says "See the Pictures". This allows you to put introductory HTML
to tell about your photos. You can put any HTML you want into this file.
This module attempts to give you a lot of fine-grained control over
image placement and layout while still keeping it simple. You should be
able to place images and cells in tables fairly precisely.
FUNCTIONS
new(opt => val, opt => val)
Create a new "HTML::PhotoAlbum" object. Typically, the only option you
need to specify is the "albums" option, which tells this module which
albums you're going to allow indexing:
my $album = HTML::PhotoAlbum->new(
albums => {
dir1 => "My First Album",
dir2 => "My Second Album"
}
);
The "new()" method accepts the following options:
albums => { dir => 'Title', dir => 'Title' }
This accepts a hashref holding subdir and title pairs. Each of the
subdirs must live beneath "." (or whatever you set "dir" to below).
The title is what will be displayed as the album title both in the
thumbnails page as well as the navigation bar.
You can also specify a filename, in which case it will be read for
the names of the albums. The format is the same as the
"captions.txt" file:
# Sample albums.txt file
sf_trip San Francisco Trip
sjc_vac San Jose Vacation
You would then use this like so:
my $album = HTML::PhotoAlbum->new(albums => 'albums.txt');
If you have a lot of albums, this will allow less code maintenance
in the long run.
dir => $path
The directory holding the images. This defaults to ".", meaning it
assumes your CGI script lives at the top level of your albums
directory (as shown above). If you mess with this, you must
understand that this directory must be visible from the web as a
URL. It is recommended that you don't mess with this.
render(opt => val, opt => val)
The "render()" method is responsible for formatting the HTML for the
actual pages. It returns a string, which can then be printed out like
so:
print $album->render(header => 1);
This method takes a number of options which allow you to tweak the
formatting of the HTML produced:
eachrow => $num
The number of images to put in each row of the thumbnail page.
Defaults to 4.
eachpage => $num
The number of images to display on each thumbnail page. Defaults to
16. This should be a multiple of "eachrow", but doesn't have to be.
header => 1 | 0
If set to 1, a "Content-type" header and HTML title will be printed
out, meaning you don't have to do this yourself. Defaults to 0.
navwrap => 1 | 0
If set to 1, the navigation bar will wrap from last page to the
first for both thumbnails and full-size images. Defaults to 0.
navfull => 1 | 0
If set to 0, then a navigation page will *not* be created for the
full-size images. Instead, the thumbnail pages will link to the
full-size images directly.
linktext => $string
Printed out followed by a number if no thumbnail is found. Defaults
to "Image".
nexttext => $string
The text for the "next page" link. Defaults to "Next". Note you can
do snazzy navigation by doing something tricky like this:
nexttext => "<img src=/images/next.gif>"
But don't tell anyone I said that.
prevtext => $string
The text for the "previous page" link. Defaults to "Prev".
In addition, you can specify tags for any HTML element in one of two
ways. This is stolen directly from HTML::QuickTable. First, you can
specify them as "tag_attr", for example:
body_alink => 'silver' # <body alink="silver">
td_bgcolor => 'white' # <td bgcolor="white">
font_face => 'arial', # <font face="arial" size="3">
font_size => '3'
Or, you can point the tag name to an attr hashref. These would have the
same effect as the above:
body => { alink => 'silver' }
td => { bgcolor => 'white' }
font => { face => 'arial', size => 3 }
These tags will then be changed appropriately in the HTML, allowing you
to completely manipulate what the HTML that is printed out looks like.
Several of these options are set by default to make the standard HTML
look as nice as possible.
selected
This returns the name of the selected album, allowing you to
conditionally change its layout:
if ($album->selected eq 'sf_trip') { ... }
If no album is selected, this will return undef.
EXAMPLE
Here's a simple photo album script that I use to manage my albums. Note
that it dynamically builds a list of the albums from a file in the
top-level albums directory, since I have a lot of albums.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use HTML::PhotoAlbum;
my $album = HTML::PhotoAlbum->new(
albums => 'albums.txt',
nexttext => '>>', # >>
prevtext => '<<', # <<
font_color => 'white',
body => {
bgcolor => 'black',
link => 'orange',
alink => 'silver',
vlink => 'gray',
},
table_width => '95%'
);
if ($album->selected eq 'sf_trip') {
# Larger images in this album
print $album->render(header => 1, table_width => '100%',
eachrow => 3, eachpage => 9);
} else {
# All other albums standard
print $album->render(header => 1, table_width => '100%');
}
If you put this script in "~/public_html/albums", then people would
access your photo albums via "
http://yourserver/~yourname/albums". Easy
enough.
NOTES
On an error condition, a 404 Not Found page will be printed in the
browser. If the error is suspected to be the programmer's fault, a
message will be printed to the error_log. Some errors are not logged
because they can be triggered by users trying to screw around
(specifying a large page number or image number, for example).
There are a number of other photo albums on CPAN that are worth looking
at, and the PHP "Gallery" alternative is nice too (albeit SLOW).
VERSION
$Id: PhotoAlbum.pm,v 1.20 2005/07/13 20:48:42 nwiger Exp $
AUTHOR
Copyright (c) 2000-2005, Nathan Wiger, <
[email protected]>. All Rights
Reserved.
This module is free software; you may copy this under the terms of the
GNU General Public License, or the Artistic License, copies of which
should have accompanied your Perl kit.
