419
votes

I need to save an image from a PHP URL to my PC. Let's say I have a page, http://example.com/image.php, holding a single "flower" image, nothing else. How can I save this image from the URL with a new name (using PHP)?

12
If copying a large quantity or size of files, note that CURL methods are preferable (like the 2nd example in the accepted answer) as CURL takes about a third of the time as file_put_contents etc.ashleedawg

12 Answers

739
votes

If you have allow_url_fopen set to true:

$url = 'http://example.com/image.php';
$img = '/my/folder/flower.gif';
file_put_contents($img, file_get_contents($url));

Else use cURL:

$ch = curl_init('http://example.com/image.php');
$fp = fopen('/my/folder/flower.gif', 'wb');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
263
votes
copy('http://example.com/image.php', 'local/folder/flower.jpg');
72
votes
$content = file_get_contents('http://example.com/image.php');
file_put_contents('/my/folder/flower.jpg', $content);
30
votes

Here you go, the example saves the remote image to image.jpg.

function save_image($inPath,$outPath)
{ //Download images from remote server
    $in=    fopen($inPath, "rb");
    $out=   fopen($outPath, "wb");
    while ($chunk = fread($in,8192))
    {
        fwrite($out, $chunk, 8192);
    }
    fclose($in);
    fclose($out);
}

save_image('http://www.someimagesite.com/img.jpg','image.jpg');
30
votes

Vartec's answer with cURL didn't work for me. It did, with a slight improvement due to my specific problem.

e.g.,

When there is a redirect on the server (like when you are trying to save the facebook profile image) you will need following option set:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

The full solution becomes:

$ch = curl_init('http://example.com/image.php');
$fp = fopen('/my/folder/flower.gif', 'wb');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
10
votes

I wasn't able to get any of the other solutions to work, but I was able to use wget:

$tempDir = '/download/file/here';
$finalDir = '/keep/file/here';
$imageUrl = 'http://www.example.com/image.jpg';

exec("cd $tempDir && wget --quiet $imageUrl");

if (!file_exists("$tempDir/image.jpg")) {
    throw new Exception('Failed while trying to download image');
}

if (rename("$tempDir/image.jpg", "$finalDir/new-image-name.jpg") === false) {
    throw new Exception('Failed while trying to move image file from temp dir to final dir');
}
4
votes
$img_file='http://www.somedomain.com/someimage.jpg'

$img_file=file_get_contents($img_file);

$file_loc=$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/some_dir/test.jpg';

$file_handler=fopen($file_loc,'w');

if(fwrite($file_handler,$img_file)==false){
    echo 'error';
}

fclose($file_handler);
4
votes

See file()PHP Manual:

$url    = 'http://mixednews.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/0ed9320413f3ba172471860e77b15587.jpg';
$img    = 'miki.png';
$file   = file($url);
$result = file_put_contents($img, $file)
1
votes

Create a folder named images located in the path you are planning to place the php script you are about to create. Make sure it has write rights for everybody or the scripts won't work ( it won't be able to upload the files into the directory).

1
votes
$data = file_get_contents('http://example.com/image.php');
$img = imagecreatefromstring($data);
imagepng($img, 'test.png');
0
votes

None of the answers here mention the fact that a URL image can be compressed (gzip), and none of them work in this case.

There are two solutions that can get you around this:

The first is to use the cURL method and set the curl_setopt CURLOPT_ENCODING, '':

// ... image validation ...

// Handle compression & redirection automatically
$ch = curl_init($image_url);
$fp = fopen($dest_path, 'wb');

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
// Exclude header data
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
// Follow redirected location
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
// Auto detect decoding of the response | identity, deflate, & gzip
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');

curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);

It works, but from hundreds of tests of different images (png, jpg, ico, gif, svg), it is not the most reliable way.

What worked out best is to detect whether an image url has content encoding (e.g. gzip):

// ... image validation ...

// Fetch all headers from URL
$data = get_headers($image_url, true);

// Check if content encoding is set
$content_encoding = isset($data['Content-Encoding']) ? $data['Content-Encoding'] : null;

// Set gzip decode flag
$gzip_decode = ($content_encoding == 'gzip') ? true : false;

if ($gzip_decode)
{
    // Get contents and use gzdecode to "unzip" data
    file_put_contents($dest_path, gzdecode(file_get_contents($image_url)));
}
else
{
    // Use copy method
    copy($image_url, $dest_path);
}

For more information regarding gzdecode see this thread. So far this works fine. If there's anything that can be done better, let us know in the comments below.

-1
votes

install wkhtmltoimage on your server then use my package packagist.org/packages/tohidhabiby/htmltoimage for generate an image from url of your target.