Welcome to a quick tutorial on how to create a very simple PHP image gallery. Tired of all those complicated gallery plugins on the Internet?
Creating a no-database PHP image gallery is as easy as getting a list of image files using glob()
and outputting them in HTML.
$images = glob("PATH/GALLERY/*.{jpg,jpeg,gif,png,bmp,webp}", GLOB_BRACE);
foreach ($images as $i) { echo "<img src='gallery/". rawurlencode(basename($i)) ."'>"; }
Yep, just like that in 1 minute. But how does this work exactly? Let us walk through a no gimmicks image gallery in this guide – Directly reads image files from a folder, no database required. Read on!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DOWNLOAD & NOTES
Here is the download link to the example code, so you don’t have to copy-paste everything.
EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD
The example code is released under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.
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PHP SIMPLE IMAGE GALLERY
All right, let us now get into creating the very basic image gallery – Requiring only a few lines of PHP code, it’s so simple that you will laugh all the way to the moon.
TUTORIAL VIDEO
STEP 1) GET IMAGES & OUTPUT AS HTML
<!-- (A) CSS & JS -->
<link href="1b-gallery.css" rel="stylesheet">
<script src="1c-gallery.js"></script>
<div class="gallery"><?php
// (B) GET IMAGES IN GALLERY FOLDER
$dir = __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "gallery" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
$images = glob("$dir*.{jpg,jpeg,gif,png,bmp,webp}", GLOB_BRACE);
// (C) OUTPUT IMAGES
foreach ($images as $i) {
printf("<img src='gallery/%s'>", rawurlencode(basename($i)));
}
?></div>
Yep, that’s all to the gallery page. As in the introduction, all we are doing here is –
- (B) Get a list of image files from the gallery folder using
glob()
. - (C) Output them as HTML
<img>
tags in<div class="gallery">
.
STEP 2) CSS GRID LAYOUT
/* (A) GALLERY WRAPPER */
.gallery {
/* (A1) GRID LAYOUT - 3 IMAGES PER ROW */
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr));
grid-gap: 20px;
/* (A2) OPTIONAL WIDTH RESTRICT */
max-width: 1000px;
margin: 0 auto;
overflow: hidden;
}
/* (B) GALLERY IMAGES */
.gallery img {
/* (B1) DIMENSION */
width: 100%;
height: 180px; /* optional */
padding: 10px;
/* (B2) COLORS */
border: 1px solid #ddd;
background: #fff;
/* (B3) IMAGE RESIZE */
/* cover | contain | fill | scale-down */
object-fit: cover;
}
/* (C) ON SMALL SCREENS - 2 IMAGES PER ROW */
@media only screen and (max-width: 600px) {
.gallery {
grid-template-columns: repeat(2, minmax(0, 1fr));
}
}
/* (D) OPTIONAL ZOOM ON HOVER */
.gallery img:hover {
z-index: 9;
transform: scale(1.3);
/* linear | ease | ease-in | ease-out | ease-in-out */
transition: transform ease 0.5s;
}
/* (E) FULLSCREEN MODE */
.gallery img.full {
position: fixed;
top: 0; left: 0; z-index: 999;
width: 100vw; height: 100%;
object-fit: contain;
background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);
}
.gallery img.full:hover {
z-index: 999;
transform: none;
}
Of course, we are not so “barbaric” to throw out raw images without cosmetics.
- (A1)
display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr));
will lay out in a “nice gallery format” of 3 images per row. - (B)
width: 100%; height: 180px;
to set a “uniform dimension” on all images. - (B)
object-fit
is the “image scale to fit” behavior. Change this and see for yourself, choose one that you like. - (C) On smaller screens, change the layout to 2 images per row.
- (E) When the user clicks on an image, we toggle a
.full
CSS class on it. Long story short,.full
simply sets the image to cover the entire screen.
STEP 3) JAVASCRIPT TOGGLE FULLSCREEN IMAGE
window.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", () => {
// (A) GET ALL IMAGES
var all = document.querySelectorAll(".gallery img");
// (B) CLICK ON IMAGE TO TOGGLE FULLSCREEN
if (all.length>0) { for (let img of all) {
img.onclick = () => img.classList.toggle("full");
}}
});
- On window load, get all the gallery images.
- On clicking the image, toggle the
.full
CSS class – This will show the image in fullscreen.
EXTRAS
That’s it for all the code. Here are some extras that may be useful to you.
EXTRA) FILENAME AS IMAGE CAPTION
foreach ($images as $i) {
$img = basename($i);
$caption = substr($img, 0, strrpos($img, "."));
printf("<figure><img src='gallery/%s'><figcaption>%s</figcaption></figure>",
rawurlencode($img), $caption
);
}
Since there is no database, there is nowhere we can store the captions. But we can still use the file name as the caption of the images – This is just a small modification to the PHP to also output the <figcaption>
.
EXTRA) SORTING THE IMAGES
usort($images, function ($file1, $file2) {
return filemtime($file2) <=> filemtime($file1);
});
usort($images, function ($file1, $file2) {
return filemtime($file1) <=> filemtime($file2);
});
sort($images); // low to high
rsort($images); // high to low
EXTRA) MULTIPLE CATEGORIES & FOLDERS
<h1>CATEGORY A</h1>
<div class="gallery"><?php
$images = glob(FOLDER A);
foreach ($images as $i) { printf("<img src='FOLDER A...'>"); }
?></div>
<h1>CATEGORY B</h1>
<div class="gallery"><?php
$images = glob(FOLDER B);
foreach ($images as $i) { printf("<img src='FOLDER B...'>"); }
?></div>
Just put your images into different category folders, and repeat the “get list of files and output HTML”. Of course, this is good as a “quick fix” only. Not recommended if you have a dozen folders.
EXTRA) INCLUDE VIDEOS
// (A) GET IMAGES & VIDEOS
$media = glob("$dir*.{jpg,jpeg,gif,png,bmp,webp,avi,mp4}", GLOB_BRACE);
// (B) OUTPUT HTML
foreach ($media as $i) {
$parts = pathinfo($i);
if ($parts["extension"]=="avi" || $parts["extension"]=="mp4") {
printf("<video src='gallery/%s' controls></video>", basename($i));
} else { printf("<img src='gallery/%s'>", basename($i)); }
}
But the problem is – How to deal with video playback. Play while in the thumbnail size? Or engage in full-screen mode first? Check out the video gallery tutorial below if you want more.
INFOGRAPHIC CHEATSHEET
COMPATIBILITY CHECKS
- Arrow Functions – CanIUse
- CSS Grid – CanIUse
- Transition – CanIUse
This simple gallery will work on any modern browser.
USEFUL LINKS
- Simple PHP Video Gallery – Code Boxx
- Very Simple Responsive Image Gallery (Pure HTML CSS) – Code Boxx
- Simple Javascript CSS Slideshow – Code Boxx
THE END
Thank you for reading, and we have come to the end of this short tutorial. I hope that it has helped you to create a better (and simpler) image gallery, and if you have anything to share with this guide, please feel free to comment below. Good luck and happy coding!
i really like this code, thanks for posting it. how would one put an image counter?
<?=count($images)?>
mega frajda, supcio