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Here is a simple phpThumb helper for CakePHP. The helper will check to see if a thumbnail is cached first. If its not, it will instantiate a phpThumb object, process the image and cache it for you.

The cache filename is based on the parameters you pass in. So for example, a 400x300 thumb would yield a different cache filename than the same image at 200x200. I also added a check to see if the source file has been modified since the thumb was last created. This will generate a new thumbnail for the updated image automatically. You should be able to do anything that phpThumb can do with this helper. Cropping, watermarks, etc.

Enjoy... And thanks to the people on the bakery who found it useful and submitted positive comments when I submitted the first version back in July 2008.

Installation

Get a copy of phpThumb

Download a copy of phpThumb and place it in your Vendors directory.

Note: I renamed the phpThumb folder from "phpThumb_1.7.9" to just "phpThumb". If you plan to keep the default folder name, just change the import statement in the helper.

Get the helper code

Grab the helper code from GitHub and place it in the app/views/helpers directory.

Usage

Here's a quick explanation of the options you can pass in:

save_path - Where to save the thumbnail. (Make sure it is writable by the web server)

display_path - The web accessible path to the directory that the thumbnail lives in after its created. I included this so instead of using /path/to/image/directory, I can also use http://images.domain.com if I wanted to. (Although I don't do it that way in this blog);

error_image_path - The default image to display if something goes wrong while generating a thumbnail.

src - The source image to be converted into a thumbnail.

Below is the code I use to generate square thumbnails for my archive pages.

	

	
	    <?
	    $thumbnail = $phpthumb->generate(
	        array(
	        	'save_path' => WWW_ROOT . 'assets/img/thumbs',
	        	'display_path' => '/assets/img/thumbs',
	        	'error_image_path' => '/assets/img/error.jpg', 
	    		'src' => WWW_ROOT . 'assets/img/' . $article['Article']['thumbnail'],
	    		// From here on out, you can pass any standard phpThumb parameters
	    		'w' => 100, 
	    		'h' => 100,
	    		'q' => 100,
	    		'zc' => 1
	        )
	    );
	    ?>
	    
	    <?= $html->image($thumbnail['src'], array('width' => $thumbnail['w'], 'height' => $thumbnail['h'])); ?>
	    
	

If all goes well, the helper will return an array like so:

Array
(
	[error] => 0 // No error, everything went ok
	[src] => /assets/img/thumbs/911229ce463571caf1411512c866e05a.png // Path to thumbnail
	[w] => 100 // width
	[h] => 100 // height
)

If an error occurs, you get something like below:

Array
(
	[error] => 1 // There was an error
	[error_detail] => File dd does not exist // The error message
	[src] => /assets/img/error.jpg // Display the default or error image
	[w] => 100 // width
	[h] => 100 // height
)

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