I had great fun putting together yesterday's blog about My train journey from Melksham, with a whole lot of images in the text rather than real words.


For my first tests, the images sat on the line like this: which starts to look really ugly once you 've added more that a couple of pictures - so I have fine tuned my "img" tags, adding in both align="middle" and "vspace=2" (and, yes, I know ... deprectation warning - should have used style!). I then added alt="what it is text" to provide a backdrop of desciptive text whould people use various browser facilities to read me properly.


But then I also wanted to provide me with a "just show me the friging text" option, so I wrapped my images in PHP tags:
< imagestart("tiny_bristol") ?>Bristol< imageend() ?>
and provided thos extra functions imagestart and imageend:

<?php function imagestart($wot) {
  return (($_REQUEST[txt]=="")?
  "<img src=http://www.wellho.net/pix/$wot.jpg align=middle vspace=2 alt=\""
  :"") ; }
function imageend() {
  return (($_REQUEST[txt]=="")?
  "\">"
  :""); } ?>
i
Notes

1. The reason to use functions should be glaringly obvious - it saves the need to keep repeating a messy piece of code. Write it once, debug it once, and have it used consistently. But why two functions? Ah - that's because I want to keep my ALT text outside the tags so that if I run the PHP function stripslashes on the text, I am left with the keywords correctly. That way, I can help blog feeds and our own other scripts which re-use the blog text or search through it such as this one to index / report the page properly too.

2. The $_REQUEST[txt] control is the quasi-form element that I am using to control whether the text is show in picture or text form. It's defaulting to pictures, but links on via
<a href="?txt=x">[here]</a>
to the plain text version and back via
<a href="?txt=">[here]</a>
to the version with pictures again.

3. In order to keep PHP code in my Movable Type (Moveabletype) database, I added code that uses functions such as ob_get_contents to my templates, and I've also ensured that .html URLs are parsed by the PHP interpretter. For details, see here and here
(written 2009-10-26 05:16:35)

 H305 - PHP - Web server configuration
  [2774] PHP - Object Oriented Design in use - (2010-05-21)
  [2773] Dynamically watching your web site via a PHP wrapper - (2010-05-21)
  [1938] Predictive Load Balancing - PHP and / or Java - (2008-12-13)
  [1778] Pointing all the web pages in a directory at a database - (2008-08-30)

H312 - PHP - Tips and Techniques
  [2274] PHP preg functions - examples and comparision - (2009-07-08)
  [2025] Injection Attack if register_globals in on - PHP - (2009-02-04)
  [1983] Keeping PHP code in database and running it - (2009-01-09)
  [1958] PHP - Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end ... - (2008-12-23)
  [1684] Two PHP include files to make easy web site indexing and navigation - (2008-06-21)
  [1667] Checking server performance for PHP generated pages - (2008-06-06)
  [1649] Easy conversion - image formats, currencies and distances - (2008-05-21)
  [1270] PHP Standalone - keyboard to screen - (2007-07-18)
  [1010] Dates, times, clickable diarys in PHP - (2006-12-28)
  [917] Syntax checking in PHP - (2006-11-07)
  [789] Hot answers in PHP - (2006-07-02)

A603 - Web Application Deployment - Further httpd Configuration
  [2272] Monitoring and loading tools for testing Apache Tomcat - (2009-07-07)
  [2060] Database connection Pooling, SSL, and command line deployment - httpd and Tomcat - (2009-03-01)
  [1974] Moving a directory on your web site - (2009-01-03)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1954] mod_rewrite for newcomers - (2008-12-20)
  [1939] mod_proxy_ajp and mod_proxy_balancer examples - (2008-12-13)
  [1767] mod_proxy and mod_proxy_ajp - httpd - (2008-08-22)
  [1762] WEB-INF (Tomcat) and .htaccess (httpd) - (2008-08-20)
  [1707] Configuring Apache httpd - (2008-07-12)
  [1636] What to do if the Home Page is missing - (2008-05-08)
  [1619] User and Group settings for Apache httpd web server - (2008-04-22)
  [1566] Strange behaviour of web directory requests without a trailing slash - (2008-03-06)
  [1564] Default file (MiMe types) for Apache httpd and Apache Tomcat - (2008-03-04)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1551] Which modules are loaded in my Apache httpd - (2008-02-23)
  [1381] Using a MySQL database to control mod_rewrite via PHP - (2007-10-06)
  [1377] Load Balancing with Apache mod_jk (httpd/Tomcat) - (2007-10-02)
  [1355] .php or .html extension? Morally Static Pages - (2007-09-17)
  [1351] Compressing web pages sent out from server. Is it worth it? - (2007-09-14)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1121] Sharing the load with Apache httpd and perhaps Tomcat - (2007-03-29)
  [1080] httpd.conf or .htaccess? - (2007-02-14)
  [1009] Passing GET parameters through Apache mod_rewrite - (2006-12-27)
  [934] Clustering, load balancing, mod_rewrite and mod_proxy - (2006-11-21)
  [853] To list a directory under httpd on a web server, or not? - (2006-09-02)
  [755] Using different URLs to navigate around a single script - (2006-06-11)
  [662] An unhelpful error message from Apache httpd - (2006-03-30)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [631] Apache httpd to Tomcat - jk v proxy - (2006-03-03)
  [550] 2006 - Making business a pleasure - (2006-01-01)
  [526] Apache httpd - serving web documents from different directories - (2005-12-12)
  [466] Separating 'per instance' data from binaries and web sites - (2005-10-16)
  [345] Spotting a denial of service attack - (2005-06-12)

Back to By train ...

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Load balancing with sticky sessions (httpd / Tomcat)
Sample code with errors in it on our web site
Pantomimes around Melksham - 2009/2010 season
Accidentally typed ci rather than vi?
How did I do THAT?
By train ...
Tcl - uplevel to run code at calling level
Quick easy and dangerous - automated logins via Tcl / Expect
Using Tcl and Expect to automate repetitive jobs
Exploring Old Railways