NAME HTML::PhotoAlbum - Easily create web based photo albums 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); } REQUIRES This module requires CGI::FormBuilder v2.0 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 => "" But don't tell anyone I said that. prevtext => $string The text for the "previous page" link. Defaults to "Prev". In addition, you can specify tags for any HTML element in one of two ways. This is stolen directly from the HTML::QuickTable manpage. First, you can specify them as "tag_attr", for example: body_alink => 'silver' # td_bgcolor => 'white' # font_face => 'arial', # font_size => '3' Or, you can point the tag name to an attr hashref. These would have the same effect as the above: body => { alink => 'silver' } td => { bgcolor => 'white' } font => { face => 'arial', size => 3 } These tags will then be changed appropriately in the HTML, allowing you to completely manipulate what the HTML that is printed out looks like. Several of these options are set by default to make the standard HTML look as nice as possible. selected This returns the name of the selected album, allowing you to conditionally change its layout: if ($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 Some have asked "Why not just build a list of the albums from the contents of the albums directory, instead of using the 'albums' option?" Simple: Security. Try using the "albums.txt" file. 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). If you're using "mod_perl", you may want to check out the Apache::PhotoIndex manpage as another alternative. VERSION $Id: PhotoAlbum.pm,v 1.17 2002/01/08 01:44:05 nwiger Exp $ AUTHOR Copyright (c) 2000-2002, Nathan Wiger, Nateware Inc. . 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.