Question

Is it possible to recreate images from binary data (process them if needed) and display them, all in the same script? Something like

// get and display image 1:
$imagedata1 = file_get_contents('assets/test.png');
$imagedata1 = process_using_gd_or_something($imagedata1);

echo "<img src={$imagedata1} >"; // <-- IS THIS (OR EQUIVALENT) POSSIBLE?

// get and display image 2:
//etc...

I want to avoid storing the images to to disk after processing and getting them from there, or using an external script…

Answer 1

You can do this using a data URI in the image src attribute.

The format is: data:[<MIME-type>][;charset="<encoding>"][;base64],<data>

This example is straight from the Wikipedia page on data URIs:

<?php
function data_uri($file, $mime) 
{  
  $contents = file_get_contents($file);
  $base64   = base64_encode($contents); 
  return ('data:' . $mime . ';base64,' . $base64);
}
?>

<img src="<?php echo data_uri('elephant.png','image/png'); ?>" alt="An elephant" />