Question

I’m trying to get an image gallery management removal process working in PHP. I’ve been stumbling on how I could update the list order so they stay in the same order after the removal.

I have an associative array ($images) where the key is the same as the ‘order’ value this number defines the placement in the gallery. I also have a list of the order numbers which should be removed this removes each image by identifying it with the order number.

$images format

array(28) {
[1]=>
  array(5) {
    ["gallery_id"]=>
    string(2) "71"
    ["property_id"]=>
    string(1) "3"
    ["picture"]=>
    string(17) "imgname.jpg"
    ["order"]=>
    string(1) "1"
    ["alt_text"]=>
    string(14) "discription"
  }
[2]=>
  array(5) {
    ["gallery_id"]=>
    string(2) "83"
    ["property_id"]=>
    string(1) "3"
    ["picture"]=>
    string(17) "imgname.jpg"
    ["order"]=>
    string(1) "2"
    ["alt_text"]=>
    string(14) "discription"
  }
So on... how ever large the list might be.

List of images to remove

$removedImgs

array(2) {
    [0]=> string(1) "1"
    [1]=> string(1) "3"
}

The above shows images 1 and 3 will be removed from the gallery

Current:    1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
Removal:    2 4 5 6
            | | | |
Reordering: 1 2 3 4

The actual removal code

// Loop though with each image and remove the ones posted from the list
foreach ($_POST['orderID'] as $removeImg)
{
    // Store each removed images order id
    $removedImgs[] = $removeImg;

    // If we're removing images create a list of the image paths to
    // unlink the files later.
    if (isset($images[$removeImg]))
    {
        $unlinkList[] = $imgPath . $images[$removeImg]['picture'];
        $unlinkList[] = $imgPath . 'thumbs/thumb' . $images[$removeImg]['picture'];
    }

    // $images should only contain the ones that we haven't removed.
    unset($images[$removeImg]);

    // Update the image order
    foreach ($images as $key => &$img)
    {
        if ($key > $removeImg)
        {
            (int)$img['order']--;
        }
    }
    var_dump($images);
    echo "\n\n==========\n\n";
}

Answer 1

If you have control over when the images are removed, you’d have a much easier time updating the orders at that time.

function removeImage($images, $imgName)
{
    $removedImgNum = $images[$imgName]['order'];
    $images[$imgName] = undefined; // or delete, etc

    foreach ($images as $img)
    {
        if ($img['order'] > $removedImgNum)
            $img['order']--;
    }
}