Programming PHP, 3rd Edition

Dynamically Generated Buttons

Creating images for buttons on the fly is one popular use for generating images (this was introduced in Chapter 1 as well). Typically, this involves compositing text over a preexisting background image, as shown in Example 9-8.

Example 9-8. Creating a dynamic button

<?php
$font = "times";
$size = isset($_GET['size']) ? $_GET['size'] : 12;
$text = isset($_GET['text']) ? $_GET['text'] : '';

$image = imagecreatefrompng("button.png");
$black = imagecolorallocate($image, 0, 0, 0);

if ($text) {
  // calculate position of text
  $tsize = imagettfbbox($size, 0, $font, $text);
  $dx = abs($tsize[2] - $tsize[0]);
  $dy = abs($tsize[5] - $tsize[3]);
  $x = (imagesx($image) - $dx ) / 2;
  $y = (imagesy($image) - $dy ) / 2 + $dy;

  // draw text
  imagettftext($image, $size, 0, $x, $y, $black, $font, $text);
}

header("Content-Type: image/png");
imagepng($image);

In this case, the blank button (button.png) looks as shown in Figure 9-7.

Figure 9-7. Blank button

The script in Example 9-8 can be called from a page like this:

<img src="button.php?text=PHP+Button" />

This HTML generates the button shown in Figure 9-8.

Figure 9-8. Button with generated text label

The + character in the URL is the encoded form of a space. Spaces are illegal in URLs and must be encoded. Use PHP’s urlencode() function ...