Topic: php advice needed

[Rik]

Good luck, Paul, it's way over my head.

[sam]

I'll have another think tomorrow - I've been busy calibrating the Arecibo telescope all day and am now shattered.

[Clive]

Will you have to return to Arecibo again this year? 

[Rik]

Is that something like 'Torna a Surriento ', Clive?

[Clive]

Yes, but sung with a Spanish accent.   

[Rik]

Si.

[Simon]

you called?

[Rik]

Close. 

[sam]

Will you have to return to Arecibo again this year? 

hopefully, not sure though

[sam]

I've been thinking about this problem a bit more...

How about this:

Have an array of the dimensions of the overall image.

Then when you add an image to the array change the values of the array to something say -9. Then you have an idea of what positions are used up.

Each time you add an new image find all values that aren't -9 then take the first x,y location that fits for the image input (I guess you'd need to also hunt down the first one that matches the same dimensions). As the loop is left add -9 to it.. and so on for new images. You could do the inverse to remove images.

Then have a final loop that prints out the html code of the images at the correct array positions.

I'd like to try and write the code too but I don't really have the time at the moment. I think the above would work but I'm not entirely sure.

You could possibly also produce the image on a on the fly with imagemagik. Just figure out ħow you would stick the images together in gimp and follow the same procedure...

[psp83]

Thanks Sam.

I'll be trying something this week and will let you know how it goes, just been too busy to try it yet 

[psp83]

I am pleased to say I think this problem is no more.

I'm working in "blocks" instead of pixels. So I have a db table thats 100x100 block, a 40x40px ad is a 4x4 block.

I have code that loops through vert & horz to check available blocks, if there is any then allocate the blocks with the ad id.

For display I can then take the first vert & horz number for each ad and use that to absolute position the ad on the page.

[Rik]

I understood every other word, Paul.

[Simon]

I understood the first line. 

[sam]

cool glad you got it working, if the page is public I'd love to take a look.