thumdb: A PHP repository from vmichnowicz

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ThumDB (v 0.1)

ThumDB is CodeIgniter library that allows you to store JPG, PNG,
and GIF images and their corresponding thumbnails in a MySQL
database.

NOTE: I have not used this library for anything important yet.
I have no idea how it functions in the "real world." Once I use
this library for a real project I will develop it, and the 
corresponding documentation, much further. I have only tested
this library with CI 2, thou I am sure it can get up and running
on CI 1.7.2 with little to no work.

by: Victor Michnowicz
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*Sometimes* it is advantageous to sore images in a database (as
opposed to on a file system). ThumDB aims to simplify that
process.

ThumDB sees two types of images: originals & thumbnails.

Originals:
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Originals are, well, the original images you want stored in the
database. These images will generally be quite large. They are
the high-resolution images you want all your thumbnails to be 
based off.

Originals have:
	- unique ID
	- alt text
	- URL slug
	- width
	- height
	- Image type (jpg, png, gif)

Thumbnails:
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Thumbnail generation is accomplished using the GD library. The
thumbnail generation process is important - thumbnails are
scaled proportinatly to the dimensions you specify. If you have
an original image that is 1000px wide and 500px tall, and you 
make a thumbnail that is 500px wide and 500px tall, then the 
resulting image will have 250px chopped off each side of the 
original image.

ThumDB will not squish your image to fit inside the 500px x 500px
box.

Thumbnails are uniquely identified by four attributes:
	- width
	- height
	- image type (jpg, png, gif)
	- parent (original image) ID
	
Gettin' it done:
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Once you have an original image in the database you can generate
a thumbnail like so:

$slug = 'my_image_slug';
$id = $this->thumdb->id_from_slug($slug);
$type = 'png';
$width = 150;
$height = 150;
$expire = 6500;
$this->thumdb->thumb_show($id, $type, $width, $height, $expire);

This will output a 150 x 150 PNG image that will expire in 6500
seconds. The expire value is in there just in case you are
generating so many thumbnails and you don't want your database
to overflow. Every time a thumbnail is generated a check it
run to see if any expired thumbnails are chillin' in the
database. If any are found they are terminated.

If you never want your thumbnails to expire, you can set that
value to NULL
vmichnowicz/thumdb
