Can I use a URL as the source for imagecreatefromjpeg() without enabling fopen wrappers?

Question

I know it’s possible to use imagecreatefromjpeg(), imagecreatefrompng(), etc. with a URL as the ‘filename’ with fopen(), but I'm unable to enable the wrappers due to security issues. Is there a way to pass a URL to imagecreatefromX() without enabling them?

I’ve also tried using cURL, and that too is giving me problems:

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,"http://www.../image31.jpg"); //Actually complete URL to image
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$image = imagecreatefromstring($data);
var_dump($image);

imagepng($image);
imagedestroy($image);

So i don't know the URL you are using but i just tested this myself, and seemed to work. I've used this method with ImageMagick in some projects, and in our case for security reasons, we needed to use a proxy server, so perhaps that could be your issue? — FilmJ, Sep 09 '12 at 09:40
Try dumping the `$data` to see what you are actually getting back. — FilmJ, Sep 09 '12 at 10:22
string(215063) "��ExifMM*��(1�2҇i� ��' ��'Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh2012:08:28 21:47:46�0221��nv(~�HH��Adobe_CM��Adobed�� >�"�� ? 3!1AQa"q�2��B#$R�b34r��C%�S��cs5��&D�TdE and it continues doing that for hundreds of lines. — iRector, Sep 09 '12 at 10:54
*It continues the random characters for hundreds of lines*. Not including the string(215063) or Macintosh.... — iRector, Sep 09 '12 at 10:55

FilmJ · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-09T09:05:48.023

26

You can download the file using cURL then pipe the result into imagecreatefromstring.

Example:

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $imageurl); 
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); // good edit, thanks!
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER, 1); // also, this seems wise considering output is image.
    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);

    $image = imagecreatefromstring($data);

edited Sep 09 '12 at 09:05

answered Sep 09 '12 at 08:43

FilmJ

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+1, this is better than my suggestion of using a temporary file. I tried to look for something like `imagecreatefromstring` but missed it among all the other `imagecreatefrom*` functions. – Ilmari Karonen Sep 09 '12 at 08:46
Alain thanks for the CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, i had forgotten that one. I also added CURLOPT_BINARYTRANSFER... seemed to make sense. – FilmJ Sep 09 '12 at 09:07
I know thats gotta be my answer, but I'm having an issue with displaying the image. See above for code. – iRector Sep 09 '12 at 09:30
for those who use binary transfer, we now should avoid using it because it is deprecated. https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=55635 – FerdousTheWebCoder Jul 27 '22 at 08:12
we may also use this reply here https://stackoverflow.com/a/5175664/3270433 – FerdousTheWebCoder Jul 27 '22 at 08:36

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 09 '12 at 08:45

1

You could even implement a cURL based stream wrapper for 'http' using stream_wrapper_register.

answered Sep 09 '12 at 08:45

Anthony Sterling

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 09 '12 at 08:39

0

You could always download the image (e.g. with cURL) to a temporary file, and then load the image from that file.

answered Sep 09 '12 at 08:39

Ilmari Karonen

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Can I use a URL as the source for imagecreatefromjpeg() without enabling fopen wrappers?

3 Answers3

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