Generating Images on the Fly With PHP - The GD image library
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To generate images in real-time using PHP, we need to have the GD library installed. To make sure you have the GD library installed, create a new PHP page named checkgd.php in a directory on your web server. Enter the following code into checkgd.php:
<?php
phpinfo(INFO_MODULES);
?>Run the checkgd.php page on your web server. If you can find a section for the GD library (like in the sample shown below), then you have the GD library installed and ready to go:
On the other hand, if you don’t see a section for the GD library, then you will need to download and install the GD library. If you are running windows, then installation instructions are available at
http://php.weblogs.com/php_gd. If you are running Linux, installation instructions are available at
http://www.e-gineer.com/instructions/install-gd13-for-php-with-apache-on-linux.phtml.
Both of the links to installation instructions shown above use an older version of the GD library. This is because with the newer versions, any support for GIF images has been removed due to copyright infringements.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, we will be creating an image that contains a random number, similar to the methods used by yahoo.com and paypal.com when you register to become a member.
So, now that we have the GD library installed as part of our PHP distribution, let’s jump right in and create our first image.
Next: Creating our image >>
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