I'm afraid I'm not familiar (although aware of) Mason, so I can't help
you in that context. I wrote something similar a while ago. When a user
uploads the image file it goes into a common directory that contains all
images. The file name is renamed to the following format:
<image file checksum in hex>.<image extention - .gif for example>
The checksum ensures that all filenames are unique and offers a quick
way to check if an images has already been uploaded (just gen a checksum
of the images uploaded and check if the file already exists in the
images directory). This also offers a way to have a single copy of an
image where multiple users may have uploaded the same image.
Once the image has been stored, I write an entry for each file in a
table in an RDBMS (mysql) which contains the file name
(checksum.extention), description, original file name of the image, date
uploaded, time last viewed, number of hits etc...etc...
Then just write an apache handler that provides a virtual directory
structure to view each users images. e.g.
http://example.com/images/mark/image1.jpg will be intercepted by the
handler. Handler checks if user is logged in and has access to
/images/mark and if all checks out ok, then handler fetches image1.jpg's
information from the database, fetches the corresponding
<checksum>.<extension> file and returns an image/jpeg (or image/gif or
whatever)
You can also do some funky stuff like use Image::Magick to generate
thumbnails on the fly which are cached in a seperate directory. So the
first time a thumbnail is accessed, you generate it dynamically, the
second time it is served from the directory cache. You also store the
thumbnails as a checksum of the original image (perhaps with a different
extension) so that if the original changes, the thumbnail will have to
be regenerated.
(Sorry if the above seems a little unstructured - just a brain dump
really).
~mark
will trillich wrote:
> y'all seem to have some clever brains out here, so i'm wondering
> if some of you can offer suggestions--
>
> what's a good clean way to keep images private per customer?
>
> i'm using mod_perl and HTML::Mason with session cookies, but
> coming up with a paradigm for storing and revealing images
> privately has got me a bit flummoxed.
>
> mr. smith has pix which he can see when he logs in to the
> website, and mr. brown has pix of his own, but neither can
> see the other's images. each customer can have two levels of
> imagery (main images/subsidiary images).
>
> i could have a handler intercept image requests and deny access
> if session->user isn't valid ... should i just make an apache
> alias to handle images as if they're from a certain subdir? and
> then use mod_perl to redirect the requests to the actual images
> internally?
>
> or actually store the images in actual subdirs of the
> documentroot?
>
> is there a better/faster/cheaper way?
>
> i'm sure there's more than one way to do this -- and before i
> take the likely-to-be-most-circuituitous route, i thought i'd
> cull advice from the clever minds on this list...
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/newbiedoc -- we need your brain!
> http://www.dontUthink.com/ -- your brain needs us!
--
Mark Maunder
Senior Architect
SwiftCamel Software
http://www.swiftcamel.com
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
