Image URL's in datafeeds

**B1gJo3** · 02-10-04

For one of my sites I like to use both the thumbnail image and the main image. Thumbnails for category pages and large image for product pages. Some merchants give both URL's in their datafeeds, some just the thumbnail, and others just the main. In order to achieve my aims, I usually go to the site and work out the logic behind the image library. I then use text formulas in excel to get the thumbnail from the main image URL or visa versa depending on which image the datafeed gives. Most sites have some kind of logic.

Examples:

Different Directory, same name
/images/small/imgname.jpg
/images/large/imgname.jpg

Same Directory, slight name change
/images/imgname_lg.jpg
/images/imgname_tn.jpg

Same Directory, Image attributes
/images/imgname_50.jpg
/images/imgname_300.jpg

Image size folders
/images/50/imgname.jpg
/images/200/imgname.jpg
/images/500/imgname.jpg

etc. etc. etc.

But then you get some Merchants that have absolutely no logic to their image naming whatsoever.

example
images/name_of_product.jpg for main image
images/product_of_name657.jpg for thumbnail image

I don't know how these merchants keep track of their own image library, let alone affiliates working it all out. Without logic, you have to go with the image URL they have put in the datafeed. The problem this causes is, sometimes category pages take ages to load because they are importing a large images, to be displayed as thumbnails. Or the product detail pages has a tiny little image that you can't see properly. Very frustrating.

Does anyone else suffer this headache, or is just me being fuss pot?

**bodykind** · 03-10-04

We append s_ to the front of every image name to name the thumbnail, makes our life much easier plus giving the image the same name and putting them in different dir's could have implications and be easily mucked up if you inadvertently copy an image into the wrong directory.

**affcheck** · 03-10-04

You could use imagemagick to work out the size of the image and make it a thumbnail when appropriate as and when you process the datafeed. This can be done automatically on your webserver and would get round the problem you have with your category pages.

http://www.imagemagick.org
ImageMagick is a robust collection of tools and libraries to read, write, and manipulate an image in many image formats (over 90 major formats) including popular formats like TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, PhotoCD, and GIF. With ImageMagick you can create images dynamically, making it suitable for Web applications. You can also resize, rotate, sharpen, color reduce, or add special effects to an image or image sequence and save your completed work in the same or differing image format. Image processing operations are available from the command line, or from the C, C++, Perl, Java, PHP, Python, or Ruby programming languages.

Hope that helps

**Graham@Buyagift** · 04-10-04

I agree that feeds should have both a thumbnail and a large image. We are restricted by the Awin format to only listing one image, although we offer feeds directly that contain both.

Graham

**B1gJo3** · 04-10-04

Do have a url to get your own feed at buyagift, or do you email it? If you email it, can I have a copy?

Also, about the imagemagic programme, the idea seems good, but what if the Merchant only gives you the thumbnail URL? Even if it does, there is no point blowing up an image, unless it is a vector. And we don't use vecor images.

**affcheck** · 04-10-04

Absolutely, imagemagick will only help you one way, but it would help with load speed etc when squashing a big image down to thumb size when thumb not available.

**B1gJo3** · 04-10-04

Therefore, we need to go back to the Merchants to deliver simpler solutions. If you are managing several merchants and some give main image, and some thumbnail, we would be using imagemagic for some and not others, the whole issue would be become confusing once again.

**affcheck** · 04-10-04

I agree imagemagick wasn't intended to be a long term solution, but just a work around for you so that you avoid the problem with making big images squeezed into thumbs.

However you could use the imagemagick process for all files to determine what type it is (i.e. thumb or normal) as the imagemagick process can return image size (i.e. 300x400, not 40kb) so you could first get the size then decide what it is and then choose or not to make a thumb.

**geordieGeek** · 13-10-07

Hi all

I have just joined as I a putting the finishing touches to my new site and have a quick couple of questions:

Do other people make local (server) copies of the images in the datafeeds to stop the long load times when users click on your page and loads of images load up from various 3rd party sites in the background?

Also are the affiliate networks ok with this as surely they understand the issues we face?

Lastly I have looked at a program called picturedownloader that seems to go and download a list of images (txt file) but I think the networks are blocking it as it seems to only get 1kb thumbs so anyone know of any other ways to solve this type of issue?

Cheers in advance!

**trevHCS** · 13-10-07

On the original point - seems very logical for the feed to contain a thumbnail, but for the big version to be named very similar. Eg: myhotel_t.jpg and myhotel.jpg . I know some can be a total pain on that kindof thing especially with hotels which is what we mostly deal with, but we just tend to use whatever they supply and most aren't bad these days.

With regards imagemagik, if you're using PHP then personally I'd use GD images which is generally built in and doesn't require you to both have imagemagik installed and make calls to an external program. Imagemagik can however do a lot more than GD with some stuff, but well beyond what's needed here.

In answer to geordieGeek:

- With our hotel sites we download a copy but keep the URL in the database. The system checks the date of the local file (if it exists) and updates it every 5 days thus preventing problems with out of date pics.

- As for networks, don't think they're as worried but some affiliates might not like the idea. However the sensible ones seem to understand it and some are rather grateful as it means we're not pulling bandwidth from their end.

With our sites the image URL isn't the actual file URL, eg: /directory/8267JHS.jpg where 8267JHS is the ID number of the entry in the database and then we use mod_rewrite to pass this onto the image processor script. No one knows if we're getting them live or not...

- Picture downloader sounds like it's acting as a bot which probably means it's grabbing the images way too quickly, the network's system spots this and thinks it's stealing images, so only sends back thumbnails. With that kindof thing you need to do it slowly as they don't know who you are. Also it helps if you can fake the user-agent otherwise they will spot it very easily.

Trev

**geordieGeek** · 13-10-07

Originally Posted by trevHCS

- With our hotel sites we download a copy but keep the URL in the database. The system checks the date of the local file (if it exists) and updates it every 5 days thus preventing problems with out of date pics.

With our sites the image URL isn't the actual file URL, eg: /directory/8267JHS.jpg where 8267JHS is the ID number of the entry in the database and then we use mod_rewrite to pass this onto the image processor script. No one knows if we're getting them live or not...

Thanks for quick reply!

When you say system - any pointers to this kind of system or is this a custom batch file of some sort?

I will look into the mod_rewrite way of dealing with the results

**trevHCS** · 13-10-07

The "system" is just a PHP script that finds and prints locally stored images according to the filename or URL held in the image field next to each entry (hotels in our case).

- If it finds a URL, it'll look for the filename stored locally & the file date (if applicable).
- If the above checks fail then it'll download the file from the URL and store it locally.
- In either case it then feeds out the image to the browser from the local copy.

Each image is only checked when it's actually requested by a user so we don't hammer the remote server for pottentially 1000's images all at once. It also means if a hotel entry never gets visited we don't use disk space storing the image.

Of course when a blinking image bot goes round the site, this tends to mess things up, but some of those are now ignored as there are some really annoying ones like "picsearch".

Mod_rewrite is a godsend...!!

Trev

**Julia Stent** · 14-10-07

Originally Posted by Graham@Buyagift

I agree that feeds should have both a thumbnail and a large image. We are restricted by the Awin format to only listing one image, although we offer feeds directly that contain both.

Graham

Our feed system can take both image sizes Graham! I'll send you the datafeed spec again, the version you have might be pre-ShopWindow.

Affiliate Window created a new set of requirements for the launch of ShopWindow that make recommendations tfor merchants to supply affiliates with a lot more information. It's also become easier for merchants to compare their feeds to those of other merchants in the same sector by viewing it on a ShopWindow site.

We're going through the process of working with our merchants on their feeds at the moment and this will be ongoing. If you have any feedback on a particular feed please feel free to send it over - julia.stent@affiliatewindow.com

Thanks

Julia