Displaying images using PHP not working

Question

I'm trying to display an image using a PHP script. Basically so the php script is passed on the full path to the image, and it then displays that image in the browser. I've checked to make sure the image exists, it is being read correctly, etc, however in the browser i just see the broken image box (e.g the small red cross in IE) if I go there.

My script sends out these headers:

<?php
header('Last-Modified: ' . gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s T', filemtime($file)));
header('Content-Type: '.$mime);
header('Content-Length: '.filesize($file)."\n\n");
header('Etag: '.md5($file));
echo $file;
die;

$file contains something like '/var/www/htdocs/images/file.jpg' which works. the $mime is 'image/jpeg'.

I have also tried echoing file_get_contents($file) but it didn't work either.

What is the problem, any thoughts?

Extra space or content before <? can generate bad output. Usually you must verify if your file UTF8 with no bOM! Open on notepad and delete that extra space — Miguel Q
– Miguel Q, Commented Nov 28, 2014 at 11:25
Thanks, Miguel. I wasn't able to get images to load from readfile due to having content before <?. — Jarod Thornton
– Jarod Thornton, Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 14:34

deffrin joseph · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-06 12:08:12Z

4

<?php
$filename = basename($file);
$file_extension = strtolower(substr(strrchr($filename,"."),1));
switch( $file_extension ) 
    {
    case "gif": 
        $ctype="image/gif"; 
        break;
    case "png": 
        $ctype="image/png"; 
        break;
    case "jpeg":
    case "jpg": 
        $ctype="image/jpeg"; 
        break;
    default:
    }
ob_clean();  // add this before header
header('Content-type: ' . $ctype);
readFile($file);  
?>

Some time extra space may be produced in any other file.So those extra spaces can be removed by calling ob_clean() before header() is called.

answered May 6, 2016 at 12:08

deffrin joseph

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1 Comment

Kareem Over a year ago

ob_clean(); This should be the accepted answer. Thank you

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-17 05:43:37Z

2

Striving for simplicity...

<?php
header('Content-type:' . mime_content_type($file));
readfile($file);

should function as expected.

answered Feb 17, 2009 at 5:43

Matt

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2 Comments

Ali Over a year ago

doesn't work :( shows same broken image icon :( typing the url to the image directly in the browser works, and if i type echo readfile($file) and omit the header, i can see the whole lot of gibberish which makes up the image

Matt Over a year ago

No need to type echo readfile() as readfile() writes directly to the output buffer. Adding echo would only pollute the image by echoing the number of bytes returned.

Ali · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-17 05:53:07Z

2

I found the answer, i had some extra whitespace after the ?> tag which was causing the header to not work. grrrrrrr

answered Feb 17, 2009 at 5:53

Ali

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2 Comments

roa3 Over a year ago

I often did this mistake also.. haha

Jrgns Over a year ago

It's common for people not to include the end PHP tag except if there's HTML after it. It's also part of the Zend coding standards. It can create a lot of bugs concerning headers and output.

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