Question

So, i want to do some metrics about the times one image is open, i need to give my users the link of the image but i need to track how many times they open it.

If i give them the link like http://webserver.com/image.png i cant track how many times the images is opened, so i think if i can make a PHP script who streams the binary data when the user calls the link like http://webserver.com/image.php, it maybe works.

In this scenario, i can simple write a metric script to store information like ip and time, but i don’t know how to echo the image in order to show it on the browser. I think that maybe if i open the image in binary mode from the PHP script and then stream that information to the user it will work, but in this area i know nothing.

Some people can say that i can simple do an echo("image.png"); at the end of the script but this won’t work if you think a little more.

Answer 1

Generally, you will want to tell the browser what type of content to expect, and then send the bytes of the content. For example:

incrementHitCounter();
logIP();

// Dear browser, a PNG file is coming your way
header("Content-Type: image/png");

// here it is
readfile("/path/to/image.png");

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php
• http://php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php