I use Image::Imlib2 for on the fly image creation and it works fine for me.
After the thumbnails are created, memory is restored to normal size.
Image::Imlib2 is also very vast and easy to code.
For filetypes that are not supported by imlib2, I use imagemagick which is
using some more memory but even there, memory is restored after the thumbnail
creation.
I also used it with a Treaded MPM and after 100000 thumbnails and previews the
system only uses a few megabytes more memory ( with perlInterpMaxRequests set
to 200000 and PerlInterpMax set to 8)
I think it is very useful to create thumbnails on the fly. It is maintenance
free, you can just copy images to your image directory and have them show up
immediately.
I run on a 2 gig Ram Pentium 2.66Ghz server with SUSE 9.3 with maxserver set to
20 with a front-end and a backend server. Never had any problems.
* This is how I use the thumbnail creation in MOD_PERL:
I check for the existence of an thumbnail and if not already created or
outdated, I create it and update the utime to the utime of the original file so
you can check if un update is needed.
Before I create a thumbnail, I generate a lock file which is removed
afterwards. If the images is corrupted or the process is killed during the
thumbnail creation, the lockfile exists so the process is not repeated.
This also prevent that two sessions are trying to generate a thumbnail from the
same image at the same time.
Here is some sample code from the resize routine:
############### sub create_iml_resized ######################
sub create_iml_resized {
my ( $self, $sourcefile, $cachedfile ) = @_;
# use lockfile to prevent more sessions trying to thumb the same file
# and prevent death-loops
$self->uselockfile($cachedfile, 'iml') or return;
my $maxsize = $self->{maxsize};
Image::Imlib2->set_cache_size(0);
my $image;
eval { $image = Image::Imlib2->load($sourcefile) };
if ($@ || !$image){
$status = "Error in opening image: $@";
return;
}
my $doctype = $self->{ext};
my $width = $image->get_width;
my $height = $image->get_height;
unless ( $height ){
$status = 'unknown dimensions, corrupted image' ;
return;
}
my $maxheight;
my $maxwidth;
my $ratio;
if ( $self->{fixedwidth} ){
$maxwidth = $maxsize;
$maxheight = $maxsize*1.5;
$ratio = $height/$width > 1.5 ? $height/$maxheight : $width/$maxwidth ;
} elsif ($maxsize > $fixedheight){
$maxheight = $maxsize;
$maxwidth = $maxsize*1.5;
$ratio = $width/$height > 1.5 ? $width/$maxwidth : $height/$maxheight;
} else {
$maxheight = $maxsize;
$maxwidth = $maxsize;
$ratio = $width > $height ? $width/$maxwidth : $height/$maxheight;
}
# image is needs resizing
if ( $height > $maxheight || $width > $maxwidth ){
my $tw = int( $width/$ratio );
my $th = int( $height/$ratio );
my $image2=$image->create_scaled_image($tw,$th); # Scale image
$image2->image_set_format("jpeg"); # Convert image to JPG
$image2->set_quality($self->{quality});
eval { $image2->save($cachedfile) };
if ($@){
$status = "Error in saving image: $@";
return;
}
# image size is ok but filetype is not JPEG
} elsif ( lc $doctype ne 'jpeg' || lc $doctype ne 'jpg' ){
$image->image_set_format("jpeg"); # Convert image to JPG
$image->set_quality($self->{quality});
$image->save($cachedfile);
# Filetype and size are OK so copy to thumb cache
} else {
copy($sourcefile,$cachedfile) or $status = "Copy failed: $!";
}
$self->cleanuplockfile();
return
}
####################################################
Thomas den Braber
