[FX.php List] Another image display question

[Chris Bisgard]

Hi all,
 
I have a FileMaker solution in which my images are stored externally from
the database at a web-accessible location, and I am using a web viewer
window to load them in FM layouts (i.e: no container field). We use a strict
image naming convention so that the filenames match a unique ID number for
each record in the database. There is not always an image for every record,
and because it's not desirable to see the default 404 page in the web viewer
when there isn't one, I have set up a custom 404 page for my image that just
says "Image Not Available" for my FM clients. This is all working fine.
 
However, this database is also searchable on the web, which I have set up
using FX.php. I can query for the record ID and use it to generate the URL
to the correct image file, like this:
 
print "<img src=\"http://mysite.com/images/" . $query['record_ID'][0] .
".jpg\">";
 
The problem is that I don't want web users to see a "broken image" icon when
there's no image at that location. I would rather just not have the IMG tag
appear at all in that case. In the past, we used embedded images in
container fields... not an ideal solution, but it did make it easy to just
check for image data like this:
 
if ( $query['imageContainer'][0] == '' ) { 
    // don't display the image tag 
} else { 
    // display the image tag 
}
 
But with this new improved setup, I don't have a container field to check.
How can I check to see if there's an image file there at the URL defined by
the record ID? Is there a PHP function that can check to see if an HTTP
request for the image comes back 404? Or is there a way to have FileMaker
test for the presence of an external file and return an error code I could
trap for?
 
Thanks for any help or advice, as always.
 
Chris Bisgard
Information Technology Specialist
Regional Arts & Culture Council
108 NW 9th Avenue, Suite 300
Portland, Oregon 97209-3318

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.iviking.org/pipermail/fx.php_list/attachments/20070921/32bb1e17/attachment.html