[ansel] Ansel::listGalleries()

[Heath S. Hendrickson]

Ben Chavet wrote:

>> gallery pros:
>> - gallery also has the ability to move not only images, but also entire
>> galleries around
>
>
> This is something that I'd like to do sometime soon.
>
I'd think that this would be easier if Ansel were using the true 
parent->child relationship, right?  If so, it's another incentive for 
working on the datatree driver to futher optimize it.

>> - fast operation
>
>
> Hopefully we can tweak the datatree driver to get better performance 
> out of
> ansel.
>
I would think so.  Gallery works solely on seialized PHP objects... 
which isn't very extensible or pretty.  But it is fast.

>> - better (IMHO) interface than Ansel (check out
>> https://www.outerspaceconsultants.com/gallery and
>
>
> I gotta admit, that interface is pretty sweet.  I especially like the 
> drop
> shadows.
>
I do like the interface, it's just nasty code (all nested tables).  I'd 
like it to be XHTML/CSS with W3C conformance.  But maybe that's asking 
too much.

>> - ability to dynamically rebuild thumbnails
>
>
> Not sure what you mean by dynamically rebuild thumbnails.  Ansel can 
> regenerate
> all of the thumbnails in a gallery if necessary.  Currently, it requires
> changing the thumbnail size for a gallery, but certainly this can be 
> expanded.
>
You can dynamically rebuild a thumbnail for a single image or for all 
images in the gallery.  What use is this?  I'm not 100% sure, but 
thought I'd mention it.

>> - hacks to add the ability to show last X images uploaded to all
>> galleries (or just one) and to show X random images
>
>
> Also nice.  I've contemplated on a simular feature for a while, but 
> haven't come
> up with anything concrete yet.
>
If we are tracking the uploaded date for an image, this should be really 
easy to pull off.  A simple query like SELECT FROM <> WHERE 
Attriubute="Date Uploaded" AND Value>=<Date - 7days>.  If we aren't 
tracking that, we should add it as it is a piece of information that 
does seem to be relevant and would be useful down the road (say I wanted 
to do a search of my images and display all images uploaded between 
certain dates).  The random image should be possible now.

>> gallery cons:
>> - uses image magick for image manipulation (doesn't use GD2)
>
>
> I use imagemagick with ansel & couldn't be happier.
>
I'm not knocking IM, just stating the fact that there is no alternative 
(unless you count GD1, which I don't).  Actually, most online gallery 
packages that use PHP use IM for the image manipulation functions.  It's 
fast and very good at what it does.  It's just not always going to be 
possible for someone to install it if it isn't already there.

>> Just some considerations if/when those features ever get added to Ansel.
>
>
> Some excellent points here.  Thanks for doing the research.
>
>> Let me know if you need any help tracking down the issue with the
>> ordering of entries for the XP publish interface.  I just did a quick
>> workaround where I sorted the returned entries in the XP publish code.
>> Not the right answer, but it worked for the time being.
>
>
> The image-moving feature I just committed uses the same hack that you 
> put in the
> XP Publishing.  This should help me track the problem down easier, 
> since I
> won't have to boot into windows to test it.  I just didn't want to 
> duplicate
> any efforts made by anybody else.  So, we'll see what happens now :)
>
> --Ben

One other thing that I'd like to see is the ability to export the 
caption data for images to a CSV file or something.  Then we could 
import it just as easily.  I know that I can just do direct SQL queries 
to get the data, but it would be nice to be able to create the caption 
file offline and then import it into a gallery.  And if you had an 
export feature, then it's a great way to create the initial template for 
upload (export the empty file and fill in the necessary blanks then upload).

One other question that you might know the answer to.  What are the 
reasons that uploaded images are stored with random filenames and not 
the uploaded image name?  I can guess that it was due to: 1) desire to 
avoid possible collisions, 2) get around naming convention issues 
between windows and unix.  Was there any other reason?

h