Question

I’m trying to create an image with GD then use that image with a class that requires I have the path to the image to access it. But I won’t need the image again; so I am trying to not save it to the server first.

Does an image created with GD and PHP have a temporary path before you save it with something like imagegif()?

Answer 1

No there is no disk access until a function like imagegif() is called. The image is created in memory.

If the disk access is really hurting you i see two options. If not I’d just write out the image to a temp directory.

• You could create a ramdisk (in memory file system) and write the files there
• Also you could use the vfs:// stream wrapper that would also write into a virtual file system

But both those options only make sense if the added IO would hurt you badly