NAME Apache::Album - Simple mod_perl Photo Album SYNOPSIS Add to httpd.conf SetHandler perl-script PerlHandler Apache::Album # PerlSetVar AlbumDir /albums_loc # PerlSetVar ThumbNailUse Width # PerlSetVar ThumbNailWidth 100 # PerlSetVar ThumbNailAspect 2/11 # PerlSetVar ThumbSubDir thumbs # PerlSetVar DefaultBrowserWidth 640 # PerlSetVar OutsideTableBorder 0 # PerlSetVar InsideTablesBorder 0 # PerlSetVar BodyArgs BGCOLOR=white # PerlSetVar Footer "Optional Footer Here" # PerlSetVar EditMode 0 # PerlSetVar AllowFinalResize 0 # PerlSetVar FinalResizeDir thumbs # PerlSetVar ReverseDirs 0 # PerlSetVar ReversePics 0 ABSTRACT This is a simple photo album. You simply copy some gif's/jpeg's to a directory, create an optional text block (in a file called caption.txt) to go at the top, and the module does the rest. It does however require that PerlMagick be installed. Default settings in the httpd.conf file may be overriden by creating a .htaccess file in the same directory as the image files and the caption.txt file. INSTALLATION perl Makefile.PL make make install (no test necessary) CONFIGURATION The configuration can be a little tricky, so here is a little more information. It's important to realize that there are two separate, but related directories. One is where the physical pictures reside, the other is where the "virtual" albums reside. Consider a filesystem called /albums exists and it is this filesystem that will house the images. Also consider that multiple people will have albums there, so you would create a directory for each user: /albums/jdw/albums_loc /albums/travis/albums_loc Then in your httpd.conf file you would have the following entry to allow pictures in those directories to be viewed: Alias /jdw /albums/jdw/ At this point you could view a full sized picture under the directory /albums/jdw/albums_loc as the url /jdw/albums_loc. To have an album that creates thumbnails/captions of those pictures you would need an entry like: SetHandler perl-script AllowOverride None Options None PerlHandler Apache::Album PerlSetVar AlbumDir /jdw/albums_loc PerlSetVar Footer "Jim Woodgate" Note how AlbumDir points to the url where the files exist, and the url you use to access the album will be just like that url, only substituting albums for albums_loc. If anyone knows of a way to accomplish this same thing, but using a DirectoryIndex instead, please let me know. I tried and could not get it to work! DESCRIPTION This module sets up a virtual set of photo albums starting at the `Location' definition. This virtual directory is mapped to a physical directory under `AlbumDir'. Under `AlbumDir' create a sub-directory for each photo album, and copy image files into each subdirectory. You must also make the permissions for each subdirectory so that the id which runs Apache can write to the directory. At this point, if you have PerlMagick installed, you can go to *http://your.site/albums/album_name* Apache::Album will create thumbnails for each of the images, and send the caption.txt file along with the thumbnails to the client's browser. The thumbnails are links to the full sized images. The caption.txt file The caption.txt file consists of two parts. The first part is text/html, that will be placed at the top of the html document. The second part is a mapping of filenames to captions. The module will do some simple mangling of the image file names to create the caption. But if it finds a mapping in the caption.txt file, that value is used instead. The value __END__ signifies the end of the first section and the beginning of the second. For example: Image -> Bob_and_Jenny.jpg Caption -> Bob and Jenny (the auto-generated caption) override in caption.txt Bob_and_Jenny.jpg: This is me with my sister Jenny. Here is a sample caption.txt file:

My Birthday Party

This is me at my Birthday Party!. __END__ pieinface.gif: Here's me getting hit the face with a pie. john5.jpg: This is John ThumbNail Types `ThumbNailUse' can either be set to "width" or "aspect". If `ThumbNailUse' is set to "width", thumbnails that need to be created will be `ThumbNailWidth' wide, and the height will be modified to keep the same aspect as the original image. If `ThumbNailUse' is set to "aspect", thumbnails that need to be created will be transformed by the value of `ThumbNailAspect'. `ThumbNailAspect' can be either a floating point number like 0.25 or it can be a ratio like 2 / 11. If an image file is updated, the corresponding thumbnail file will be updated the next time the page is accessed. In practice I have found that Netscape will used the cached images even if they are updated. I normally have to flush the cache and reload to see the new images. At any time you can `rm -f tn__*' in the `AlbumDir'/album_name/ directory, the next time the page is loaded all the thumbnails will be regenerated. (Naturally image names that start with tn__ should be renamed before placing them in the album directory.) ThumbSubDir If you want your thumbnails to be in a different directory than the original pictures, set `ThumbSubDir' which is the subdirectory the thumbnails will be created in and viewed from. (This could also be used to allow multiple sets of thumbnails). DefaultBrowserWidth A general number of how wide you want the final table to be, not an absolute number. If the next image would take it past this "invisible line", a new row is started. BodyArgs This entire string is passed in the tag. Useful for setting background images, background color, link colors, etc. If set in the httpd.conf file, you must put quotes around the value, and escape any quotes in the value. If this value is set in the .htaccess file, this is not necessary: In httpd.conf: PerlSetVar BodyArgs "BACKGROUND=gray.gif text=\"#FFFFFF\"" In .htaccess : PerlSetVar BodyArgs BACKGROUND=gray.gif text="#FFFFFF" OutsideTableBorder This variable's value is passed to the outer table's BORDER attribute. InsideTablesBorder This variables's value is passed to all the inner table's BORDER attributes. Note that the name of the `InnerTablesBorder' has an 's' in it, as it modifes all the inner tables. Footer This text/html will placed at the bottom of the page after all the thumbnails, but before the end of the page. Useful for links back to a home page, mailto: tag, etc. EditMode Allows the user to create new albums and upload pictures. Obviously there are security implications here, so if EditMode is turned on that location should probably have some kind of security. Albums can share the same AlbumDir, so you can have something like: /albums - ReadOnly version, no security /albums_edit - Allow new album creation and picture uploads, require authentication both using the same AlbumDir. AllowFinalResize If this is set to true, the user will have 3 additional options when viewing the full sized picture. The thumbnail can still be selected to view the full picture, or Sm (Small), Med (Medium), or Lg(Large) can be selected to bring the picture down to fit better in a 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x758 screen. ReverseDirs When viewing albums, they will be sorted by name. If this is set to true the order will be reversed. (Useful if you want to use things like dates/months as the directory names, this will put the most recent albums first. ReversePics When viewing pictures, they will be sorted by name. If this is set to true, the order of the pictures will be reversed. LIMITATIONS PerlMagick is a limiting factor. If PerlMagick can't load the image, no thumbnail will be created. COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 1998-1999 Jim Woodgate. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. AUTHOR Jim Woodgate woody@bga.com SEE ALSO perl(1), the Image::Magick manpage(3).