Picture Captions

Scott Double U · July 2007

Is there a way to add captions to pictures ? If not what are the best alternatives to Filebrowser I can't seem to find anything thats as easy to use a nice looking.

jimw · July 2007

Recently I found minishowcase which you can see here. I made a mod to it to read captions from a file. There are standalone gallery apps that allow you to add cations. Someone did do that for filebrowser but never shared what he did to make that happen to the best of my recollection.

jimw · July 2007

Since I had some time, I modified filebrowser to read a captions file like I did with minishowcase. The captions file should be tab-delimited and look like:


dscf0049.jpg	Dee, Flory, Zoey, Butch and Joyce
dscf0050.jpg	Dee and Zoey

I don't use the filename right now, but it will be useful if someone makes an additional mod to use it as the key to get the caption. However, right now the captions must be in the same order as the files in your directory.

Change the index.php file as follows:
Add the following at the top after the XML settings:

// captions settings - jimw 7/13/7
define("show_captions", true);
define("captions_file", "captions.txt");

In the function FormatDisplayedItem, just below the case "Image" line, add:

         if ( show_captions ) {      // open and parse captions file (jimw mod 7/13/7)
             if (file_exists($Config->CurrentBrowsingDirectory."/".captions_file)) {
                 $no_file = false;
                 $fp = fopen($Config->CurrentBrowsingDirectory."/".captions_file, 'rb');
                 if($fp) {
                     $i = 0;
                     while ($row = fgetcsv($fp, 100, "\t"))
                     {
                         list($files[$i], $captions[$i]) = $row;
                         $i++;
                     }
                     fclose($fp);
                 }
             } else {
                 $no_file = true;
             }
         }

Then replace the $Return .= "</div>\r\n"; line with:

         if ( show_captions ) {      // check captions setting (jimw mod 7/13/7)
             if ( $no_file ) {
                 $Return .= "</div>\r\n";
             } else {
                 $Return .= "</div>".$captions[$ItemID]."\r\n";
             }
         } else {
             $Return .= "</div>\r\n";
         }

You can then format the captions by putting whatever tag you want around it.

I hope this works for you.

jimw · July 2007

Here's some better code for the "image" case section:

      case "Image":
         $caption = "";
         if ( show_captions ) {      // open and parse captions file (jimw mod 7/13/7)
             if (file_exists($Config->CurrentBrowsingDirectory."/".captions_file)) {
                 $no_file = false;
                 $fp = fopen($Config->CurrentBrowsingDirectory."/".captions_file, 'rb');
                 if($fp) {
                     $i = 0;
                     while ($row = fgetcsv($fp, 100, "\t"))
                     {
                         list($files[$i], $captions[$i]) = $row;
                         if ($files[$i] == $FileName) $caption = $captions[$i];
                         $i++;
                     }
                     fclose($fp);
                 }
             } else {
                 $no_file = true;
             }
         }
//
         $Handled = true;
         $Return .= "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"ImgTag$ItemID\" value='<img src=\"".$EncodedPath."\" />' />
               <li class=\"CopyImg\"><a href=\"Javascript:copy(document.frmLinkContainer.ImgTag$ItemID);\">Copy img tag</a></li>
            </ul>
            <div class=\"DisplayItemImage\">";
         if ($Config->FitImagesToPage) {
            $ImageSize = @getimagesize($FolderPath);
            if ($ImageSize) {
               $Return .= "<script>writeImage('$EncodedPath', ".$ImageSize[0].", ".$ImageSize[1].", '".$ItemID."');</script>";
            } else {
               $Return .= "<img src=\"$EncodedPath\" alt=\"\" />";
            }
         } else {
            $Return .= "<img src=\"$EncodedPath\" alt=\"\" />";
         }
         $Return .= "</div>".$caption."\r\n";
         break;

This uses the actual image filename to find the corresponding caption in the captions file.

Picture Captions

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