Question

What are my options when it comes to rendering an image file? Let’s say I have one saved in foo/bar.png

Currently I know I can use readfile() or better yet, X-Sendfile (I’m on Apache). What are some other ways to do it that are better than using readfile()?

I want to output the image to the browser (Content-Type: image/png)

Answer 1

The best solution is to allow your webserver (Apache) to serve the content itself. If PHP must be used instead, all you need to to is ensure that the Content-Type is set to the appropriate value first:

header("Content-type: image/png");

Then use readfile() to send the image itself.