Zend Framework - Returning Image/File using Controller

Question

I am new to Zend Framework 2 and only know a little basics. I find it difficult to find a lot of examples as well.

Quesiton: Get BLOB field in database and display it through a controller. For example: www.mysite.com/images/2 will retrieve a BLOB from the database and display it to the user as an image so an html tag like <img src="http://www.mysite.com/images/2"/> will display an image.

I normally do it in ASP.NET MVC but have no clue how to do it here. I would be delighted if some one could enlighten me on how to achieve it.

Assume that I have fetched the image from the database.

I managed to find how to return JSON and believe some thing simple like that would work. But couldn't find the solution. I will also need to send files like that.

public function displayAction()
{
    $id = 10;
    $albumImage = $this->getAlbumImageTable()->getAlbumImage($id);

    if ($albumImages){
        //Show the image $albumImage
        //return JsonModel(array(...)) for json but for image ???
    } else{
        //Show some other image
    }
}

I would be obliged if some one could help.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As of Zend Framework 2.0 to 2.1

If you want to return an image, simply return the response object filled in with the content: that will tell the Zend\Mvc\Application to entirely skip the Zend\Mvc\MvcEvent::EVENT_RENDER event and go to Zend\Mvc\Application::EVENT_FINISH

public function displayAction()
{
    // get image content
    $response = $this->getResponse();

    $response->setContent($imageContent);
    $response
        ->getHeaders()
        ->addHeaderLine('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary')
        ->addHeaderLine('Content-Type', 'image/png')
        ->addHeaderLine('Content-Length', mb_strlen($imageContent));

    return $response;
}

This will cause the application to short-circuit to the Zend\Mvc\Event::EVENT_FINISH, which in turn is capable of sending the response to the output.

Answer 2

In addition to Ocramius' code, if you are uploading the images into a folder inside the application, you can retrieve the content, using:

$imageContent =  file_get_contents('data/image/photos/default.png');
$response->setContent($imageContent);
$response
    ->getHeaders()
    ->addHeaderLine('Content-Transfer-Encoding', 'binary')
    ->addHeaderLine('Content-Type', 'image/png')
    ->addHeaderLine('Content-Length', mb_strlen($imageContent));

return $response;