CakePHP TimthumbPlugin

This is a simple plugin which uses the Timthumb library to resize the images when requested.

Requirements

CakePHP Version - 2.2.x or 2.3.x

app/tmp/timthumb folder must be writable for cache storage (can be configured to use a different folder)

PHP GD library must also be installed on the server to use this plugin.

Usage

To use this plugin, navigate to the app/Plugin directory in your git software, and use this command:

git clone https://github.com/vdeep/TimthumbPlugin.git Timthumb

This command will create a folder named Timthumb in the plugin directory and will clone all the plugin code into it.

You can also download the zip file and extract the code manually into the Timthumb folder in the app/Plugin directory.

After copying the code, you just need to enable the plugin by adding the following code at the end of the bootstrap.php file in app/Config folder:

CakePlugin::load('Timthumb', array('routes' => true, 'bootstrap' => true));

This will load the plugin. Now, to use this in the views, you'll need to add the helper. Use this in the AppController.php file:

public $helpers = array(
	// other helpers ...
	'Timthumb.Timthumb'
	// other helpers ...
);

This will make the Timthumb helper available in all the views. Now, in the view, you just need to use this to load an image:

echo $this->Timthumb->image('/img/picture.png', array('width' => 200, 'height' => 100));

This will show the picture.png image residing in the img folder under webroot folder, after cropping/resizing it to 200 x 100 pixels.

The output will be saved in the tmp/timthumb directory as cache for future use.

To just get the url to the image file (to use with anchors or somewhere else), you can use the Timthumb->imageUrl method as follows:

$this->Timthumb->imageUrl('/img/picture.png', array('width' => 200, 'height' => 100));

This will return the url to the timthumb image, which you can use inside an anchor to create a link to the image.

Configuration

This Timthumb helper will create images using the [base_url]/timthumb URL. If you need to change this, you can do so in the app/Plugin/Timthumb/Config/routes.php file.

The default base path for images is app/webroot. It means that you'll have to pass the rest of the path in the helper. For example, if your image is `app/webroot/img/image.png', then you'll have to use:

$this->Timthumb->image('/img/image.png');

To change the default base path, change the TimthumbBasePath configuration setting in app/Plugin/Timthumb/Config/bootstrap.php file. Please note that this must be the physical address of the folder, not the URL.

To change the cache directory, change the TimthumbCacheDir configuration setting in the app/Plugin/Timthumb/Config/bootstrap.php file. Please note that this must be the physical address of the folder, not the URL.

To use a placeholder image when the passed image is not found, you can uncomment the TimthumbDefaultImg configuration in the app/Plugin/Timthumb/Config/bootstrap.php file and set it to the path of your placeholder image.

Available options for the helper

Following are the options that can be passed as an array in the Timthumb helper:

Parameter	Default Value	Other possible values
width	100	Any integer value (pixels)
height	100	Any integer value (pixels)
quality	80	Any value in range 0 - 100
alignment	'c'	(c, t, l, r, b, tl, tr, bl, br) More details
zoom_crop	1	(0, 1, 2, 3) More details
filters	none	Too many to mention More details
sharpen	none	Tutorial here
canvas_color	none	hexadecimal value (e.g. #FFFFFF)
canvas_transparency	1	0 = false, 1 = true