Posted by Dan Trainor on 09/03/05 10:42

Hello, all -

This is a question that could depend on a completely different (yet,
relayed) subject, so I'm sending this email to both php-general@ and
httpd@users.apache.org. I thank you in advance for your understanding.

I am currently generating some images on the fly using some of PHP's
image generation and rendering functions. I'm having loads of success,
and like the results that I see.

What I'd like this script to do is, to create symlinks to the origional
image, and then when the script is done running, the symlinks are
deleted. Basically trying to make it so that the origional image is not
known to the client or browser.

So I'm taking, say, image1.jpg. I'm creating a symlink via:

$linkname = md5(rand());

or something similar. I'd then like to return $linkname to the client
or browser. Then, when the browser has completed rendering the page to
the client or browser, the symlink is then deleted.

What I'm curious as to right now is if I do this, the client will see
the link to $linkname via HTML's "img src=" specification. What happens
if this is sent to the client or browser, and the symlink is deleted
immediately after the name is sent to the client or browser? Would the
web server (in this case, Apache) cache the image in memory until the
client has downloaded said image, and then delete it from memory when
the page is done rendering or being sent? Will PHP totally disregard
the web server's request to "hold" the image, and render nothing to the
browser? This is something I'm confused about.

Thanks!
-dant

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