Textpattern Support Forum

mhulse wrote:

The only problem is caching… I had to turn that off via the admin in order to get my plugin to randomly display a new image.

Textpattern doesn’t cache pages in any miracle method. Actually it’s just Last-Modified header that is then threated as browser likes.

One way to fix this, is to write plugin that updates the Last-modified time in txp_prefs table. But if you use random images, then it’s quite hard to do, as it’s based on page loading. So, if you update the last-modified time on every page load, then it’s just same like turning the caching completely off.

Althought, you could add to you random image function the last-modified updater, in example: safe_update('txp_prefs','thefield_which_name_i_dont_remember',"now()") and so-on. But it just nullifies the “caching” for those pages/sections/articles where you use that plugin.

Last edited by Gocom (2008-04-21 05:54:45)

fwiw, I have the same problem with smd_random_banner. When displaying random images, sometimes it just doesn’t do it with a simple refresh. When I use it, I always turn off send last modified header but sometimes I’d prefer not to.

I have thought of implementing an optional feature into the plugin to add a cache-buster on the end or do what Gocom suggested in prefs, but at the end of the day it seems most people would rather save download bytes than worry about an image that appears twice in succession on the same page. If anyone has any other thoughts on this, I’d be interested to hear them in case there’s something I’ve not thought of yet.

Thanks Gocom, Bloke, and jdykast — I really appreciate the help. :)

Thanks for sharing the code jdykast, that gives me some good ideas.

Have a great day all!

Cheers,
Micky

for a few years now i’ve been using a random image script for the front page of hblack.net. It seems that – from my end at least – there no caching issues.Anyway… here’s the script

<?php

//the directory

$your_dirname="random/";

//this is just the alt tag on top of the image

$your_alt_tag="helene black";

//
/*

********************* ThE SCRIPT ***********************************

*/

function displayAaPHPrandomImage($dirname, $alt){
  $dirhandle = opendir($dirname);
  while (false !== ($file = readdir($dirhandle))) {
    if ($file != "." && $file != ".." && !@is_dir($file)) {
      $filelist[] = $file;
    }
  }

  closedir($dirhandle); 
  if(sizeof($filelist) ==0) { 
    echo "No file was found in the directory!";
    exit;
  }

  srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
  $picnum = @rand(0, sizeof($filelist) - 1);
  $imageName=$dirname.$filelist[$picnum];
  $imageSize = getimagesize($imageName);

$result="$imageName";
return $result;
  }
?>

<?=displayAaPHPrandomImage($your_dirname)?>

jm, where do I put this code? in the html default page?

should I create an folder for the random images?