On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Micah Stevens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> On 11/21/2008 07:55 AM, David Giragosian wrote: > > On 11/21/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > >> I have a PHP application that accesses data from MySQL. There is table > >> called "rooms", and table called "beds". There is another table called > >> "patients". Patients are being placed into beds, and beds are in the > >> rooms. PHP application currently displays all information in textual > mode > >> via regular HTML tags. But I would like to have that information > displayed > >> in graphical mode instead of textual mode. > >> > >> Is there a way to display this information from the database > graphically. > >> Graphic would represent a room, and it would contain beds inside. You > >> would be able to see visually which beds are occupied and which are free > >> by looking at the graphics. > >> > >> User of the system wants pictures instead of text displayed via HTML > >> tables as a list of entries. > >> > >> Anyone knows anything like this? > >> Thanks, > >> Dzenan > >> > > > > > > PHP has the GD library with a fairly extensive set of functions for > creating > > images <http://us2.php.net/gd>>. > > > > You can grab data from MySQL and then use the GD functions to create > images > > dynamically. It can be tedious, as you create the image pixel by pixel, > but > > the results are very good. > > > > David > > > > > Or for reduced CPU overhead, just make some images for beds and rooms > and use tables or positioned DIV tags to place them in the appropriate > place based on the database information. > To the OP: The graphical capabilities of PHP are covered in, for example, "Beginning PHP4", by Choi, Kent, Lea, Prasad, and Ullman, Chapter 15. The nature of it is that PHP has built in libraries, and you create a logical sandbox, draw on it and manipulate it (at which point it is buffered internally in some convenient form), then emit it in one of the supported graphical file formats. It is a very easy process. I would guess that there are online tutorials as well. http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imagecreate.php You have to, of course, be careful about browser image buffering and so on, but there are standard ways to handle that by making sure the browser is aware it may not cache. The approach is very powerful because (if I'm remembering correctly), the underlying graphics library provides primitives for polygon shading, printing text, and so on. The approach involving selecting essentially which graphics to include in a tabular grid is also a good approach. IMHO the argument about CPU efficiency of this approach is very weak -- when you get down to making probably < 200 calls to manipulate the graphical sandbox, each of these calls is going to be tight code in the library that does memory manipulations. The approach follows the standard design rule that low-frequency interactions (draw object 1, draw object 2) etc. may be done relatively inefficiently in a scripting language, but the high-frequency interactions (turn on pixel x,y; turn on pixel x+1, y, ...) are done in compiled C or assembly-language. I don't believe this will be much of a CPU burden on a server. It would be more concerned if PHP were manipulating pixels or segments one-by-one, but the library isn't designed to make this necessary. Summary: (a) Both approaches are quite good, and (b) the CPU efficiency argument for stuffing prepared images into a table or similar may be weak. The Lizard
