When I set out to add database driven player info at NuggetsHoops.com, I knew that I wanted to include code that would display some of the many images that I had set aside for each NBA player. I also knew that I would continue to add new pictures. Application code that could easily display old and new images, without additional effort for each added image would work best.

I had already written PHP code that could look at a folder and create a list of images to be displayed. When I ran across the powerful jQuery Cycle Plugin, I had found a great way to display them.

Let’s get coding. This tutorial depends on PHP 5, jQuery 1.2.3 or later, jQuery Cycle Plugin version 2.51 or later.

Add the following Javascript to your PHP/HTML to enable and call the Cycle Plugin:

 Javascript |   |? 
1
<script src="/scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
2
<script src="/scripts/jquery.cycle.all.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
3
<script type="text/javascript">
4
$(document).ready(function(){
5
	$('#myslides').cycle({
6
		fit: 1
7
	});
8
});
9
</script>

Note that there are many options and styles of animation provided by the powerful Cycle plugin.

Add the following PHP to iterate over any folder and dynamically generate img tags using any images found in the folder:

 PHP |   |? 
01
$directory = 'images/players/' . $row['imageName']; 
02
try {    
03
	// Styling for images
04
	echo "<div id=\"myslides\">";
05
	foreach ( new DirectoryIterator("../" . $directory) as $item ) {			
06
		if ($item->isFile()) {
07
			$path = "/" . $directory . "/" . $item;
08
			echo "<img src=\"" . $path . "\" />";
09
		}
10
	}
11
	echo "</div>";
12
}
13
catch(Exception $e) {
14
	echo 'No images found for this player.<br />';
15
}

Any img tags within an HTML element of class ‘myslides’ (or whatever you initialized the Cycle plugin with in the Javascript) will have the slideshow behavior added to it. The $row array on line 1 is referencing a database query result, but could be set in a number of ways for your specific needs. The DirectoryIterator reference on line 5 is a builtin class in PHP5.

Here’s the CSS to style the images being displayed in the slideshow:

 CSS |   |? 
01
#myslides {
02
width: 340px;
03
float: right;
04
        padding: 0;
05
        margin:  0 auto;
06
margin-top: 20px;
07
} 
08
 
09
#myslides img {
10
    padding: 10px;
11
    border:  1px solid rgb(100,100,100);
12
    background-color: rgb(230,230,230);
13
    width: 320px;
14
    top:  0;
15
    left: 0
16
}

So, there’s a very quick walk thru a working example to generate a dynamic slideshow from any folder of images. If you’d like a full download of the code, or any further explanation, please leave a comment!

You can see this code in action by just clicking on any player’s name at the NuggetsHoops.com Roster page.

New – download the code for this Tutorial

Code for Dynamic Image Slideshow with PHP and JQuery (4084)

Demo

67 Responses to “Tutorial: Dynamic slideshow with PHP & JQuery”

  1. jjmc Says:

    Hi developer,

    I have just test your code above.. and I have already put all the images under images/players/ and put all the images like 1.jpg, 2.jpg..etc.. and same as you did. how come it doesn’t work it always display “No images found for this player.”

  2. jjmc Says:

    Hi developer,

    I have just test your code above.. and I have already put all the images under images/players/ and put all the images like 1.jpg, 2.jpg..etc.. and same as you did. how come it doesn’t work it always display “No images found for this player.” can you email me the source code for this.. I like jquery so much

    thanks and regards

  3. alan Says:

    jjmc,

    Make sure the path to your images folder is correct, based on lines 1 and 5 in the PHP source. I had to add “../” in the arg sent to the DirectoryIterator because my PHP file was in a subfolder, so the path to get to my images folder was ../images/players/anthony and so on. That path is relative to where your PHP file is on your server.

    Hope that helps! I’ll be happy to post the full source here, but won’t be able to get to that for another day or two.

  4. jjmc Says:

    thanks developer for replying.. what I’ve got now is that it is now displaying the image..but my problem now is that , it is animating. it’s only shows the image.

    also is it possible to do some descriptions everytime it loads the image.. can we do like that.. here is the code that i have..

    can you help me on this please…or any suggestions

    Untitled Document

    $(document).ready(function(){
    $(‘#myslides’).cycle({
    fit: 1, pause: 1, height: 360
    });
    });

    #myslides {
    width: 340px;
    float: right;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0 auto;
    margin-top: 20px;
    }

    #myslides img {
    padding: 10px;
    border: 1px solid rgb(100,100,100);
    background-color: rgb(230,230,230);
    width: 320px;
    top: 0;
    left: 0
    }

    <?php

    $directory = ‘/test/images/players/’ . $row['imageName'];
    try {
    // Styling for images
    echo “”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator(“../” . $directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    $path = “/” . $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }
    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this player.’;
    }

    ?>

  5. san Says:

    include (‘db_connect.php’);

    $select=mysql_query(“select * from images”);
    while($row=mysql_fetch_array($select))
    {
    $directory = ‘images/players/’ . $row['pic'];
    try {
    // Styling for images
    echo “”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator(“../../” . $directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    $path = “/” . $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }
    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this player.’;
    }
    }

    ?>

  6. san Says:

    can u please help me to debug this code.

    my image is under images/player/pic1.jpg

    am having this on my browser as result
    No images found for this player.
    thanks you

  7. alan Says:

    San,

    It appears that your image and your directory code are not in sync. On line 7, from my example I was looking for player images in “images/players/…” while you’ve stated that placed your image in “images/player/…”.

    If that’s not your issue, can you provide a link to where you are trying this?

    Alan

  8. san Says:

    hello
    am new with php and am getting confused

    my main folder is images
    and my images is in the folder player

    can u please tell me how to write it???

    thanks you..
    u r so nice

  9. san Says:

    thanks a lot Sir,

    now it is working and i have found my mistake..

    but with your code, the slideshow is taking all the picture in the folder and displaying it.

    but me i want to take picture that are from a dataabase

    my code

    $select=mysql_query(‘select photosproduit from produit where isslide=’1”)

    please help me to implement this part in my code..
    thank you

  10. alan Says:

    Excellent – glad to hear that you got it working! I was about to post that I will be adding a zipfile of the code from this tutorial to make it easier for people to get started.

    As for pulling images from a database – are you storing the entire binary image in the database or just the path to the image on your server?

  11. san Says:

    Thank You
    the path of the images that is inserted in the database is uploads/picture1.jpg
    and the folder uploads is on my server.

    can you help me please..

  12. timska77 Says:

    Hello,
    Your script is awesome. Coupling jQuery and PHP for a slideshow like this is perfect. The only problem that I encountered is that with this code Safari loads each image onto the page for a little while until all of the images are loaded and then switches to a single image and runs the slideshow as it should. Any ideas on how to solve this? Safari is a PITA but as a mac user I always try to accommodate it.

  13. indialike Says:

    Very nice and useful tutorials to web designers,
    Thanks for posting.

  14. alan Says:

    timska77 – Thanks! Strange – I don’t see that behavior in Safari 4 on Mac or PC. Are you seeing this issue with an older version of Safari?

    Here’s my test example, which uses a slightly modified version of the code from this tutorial:

    http://www.nuggetshoops.com/players/view.php?pid=1

  15. Ibrahim Odeh Says:

    Really,

    Great jobs 1 million kisses & hugs is not enough for you

    Appreciate your efforts.

    Thank you very much

  16. sathya Says:

    Appreciate your efforts.

    Thank you very much

  17. Bruce Says:

    thanks a lot Sir,

    now it is working and i have found my mistake..

    but with your code, the slideshow is taking all the picture in the folder and displaying it.

    but me i want to take picture that are from a dataabase

    my code

    $select=mysql_query(‘select photosproduit from produit where isslide=’1”)

    please help me to implement this part in my code..
    thank you

  18. Bruce Says:

    Appreciate your efforts.

    Thank you very much

  19. Alex Says:

    How come in Safari when this first loads it displays the little “image not found” icon, but then proceeds to play the slideshow. Any ideas how to solve this? Other than that this script is absolutely perfect and exactly what I was looking for.

    Cheers

  20. alan Says:

    I’m unable to reproduce that issue, but I’m testing with Safari 4.0.5 on Windows. Are you seeing the problem on a Mac, or on a different version of Safari? I can test on a Mac this weekend and see if I can reproduce it there.

    Are you seeing the broken image when running my demo page, or when trying the script on your own?

  21. Alex Says:

    I am using a Mac. It only shows when I use the script on my own with my own images. On your demo page it runs fine and completely unaltered it runs fine as well. Thanks for the swift response, you’re awesome.

    Cheers

  22. lugi Says:

    hey i am trying to implement the jquery cycle plugin in my project and i get the following error when trying to run it

    ” Undefined variable: row ”

    my diresctory points to ‘../images/clients/’

    any help?

  23. Dorsey Prouse Says:

    I would like to comment on this blog by adding that web standard are greatly important. Take a look at what is currently happening between HTML5 and Apple.

  24. Software Says:

    Congratulations! You have just won a new feed reader :) .. really awesome article, Mike.

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    [...] Read this tutorial >> [...]

  26. jingle Says:

    how can you do the same thing but showing on a 3 rows basis, one row is very easy , all the Cycle stuff works on one row but when it comes to fetching database and showing three rows is a nightmare

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  28. KP Says:

    Hi:

    I’ve been looking for a php script that automates jQuery slideshows. this is a gem of a find. thank you.

    I have a quick question. I’m using this script in a cms. Any image upload will generate an auto thumbnail. how can i modify the php code to bypass the thumbnails? currently, both image1.jpg and thumb_image1.jpg are showing.

    thank you.

  29. alan Says:

    jingle:

    Do you want to show 3 images at the same time, but pull them from a database rather than a folder on the server?

    KP:

    You should be able to just add a regexp to the if statement that checks if the current item is a file in the PHP file… that will filter out your auto-generated thumbnails from the CMS.

    Try this new version of line 6:
    if ($item->isFile() && !preg_match(‘/^thumb_/’, $item)) {

    I also created a new demo to show it working. The top slideshow will display the thumbnail, the bottom one doesn’t.

  30. KP Says:

    Hey Allan:

    I’m no php programmer so let me make sure i understand.

    I should replace

    $directory = ‘uploads/images/slideshow’ . $row['image'];
    try {
    // Styling for images

    echo “”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator(“” . $directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    $path = “/newsite/” . $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }

    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this player.’;
    }

    WITH
    $directory = ‘uploads/images/slideshow’ . $row['image'];
    try {
    // Styling for images

    echo “”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator(“” . $directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile() && !preg_match(‘/^thumb_/’, $item)) {
    $path = “/newsite/” . $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }

    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this player.’;
    }

  31. KP Says:

    Alan:

    sorry to bother. I get an error with the new php line. My code currently reads:

    $directory = ‘uploads/images/slideshow/’ . $row['imageName'];
    try {
    // Styling for images
    echo “”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator(“” . $directory) as $item ) {
    // if ($item->isFile()) {
    if ($item->isFile() && !preg_match(‘/^thumb_/’, $item)) {
    $path = “/newsite/” . $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }

    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this player.’;
    }

    the error is:
    # invalid code entered.
    # Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘^’ eval()’d code on line 7

    any ideas? the website is http://keepsakefamilytreevideo.com/newsite/

    thanks for your help.

    kp

  32. alan Says:

    No problem KP – I’m happy to try and help. I think the issue might be from the way my WordPress theme has styled the characters, or the way I cut and paste the code sample.

    Make sure the quote right after !preg_match is not the back-tick character. It should be a straight single quote. I think that’s why you are getting a syntax error from PHP. The ending quote also needs to be a single quote.

    Let me try again to show that line of code here:

    if ($item->isFile() && !preg_match(‘/^thumb_/’, $item)) {

    Basically, what that line of code does is check to see if the current item in the loop IS a file and IS NOT a file starting with the name “thumb_”.

    NOTE: After posting this comment, I can see it has the same issue… must be something in this theme that I need to look into. Anyway, on your keyboard, make sure you replace the quote after !preg_match( with the one below the double quotes key next to the Enter key on a standard keyboard. Also fix the ending quote immediately after ^thumb_/. If this doesn’t work, I’ll try and post the entire example file here as a download this week.

    Let me know how it goes!

  33. KP Says:

    Alen:

    Got it fixed. yes, it does need to be single quote. I don’t see very well and I did not notice the quotes were wrong. thanks for helping.

  34. KP Says:

    Alen:

    Got it fixed. yes, it does need to be single quote. I did not notice the quotes were wrong. thanks for helping.

  35. Niels Says:

    Alan,

    Great article, but I’ve problems with the $(document).ready(function()-function in all latest browsers: all images load shortly before the WordPress-page loads.
    It’s very frustrating, because I’ve read a lot of articles about this problem.
    Can you help me ?

    The code in header.php:

    $(document).ready(function(){
    $(‘#myslides’).cycle({
    fit: 1, pause: 2
    });
    });

    <?php
    $directory = 'wp-content/themes/iblog2/images/slideshow/' . $row['imageName'];
    try {
    // Styling for images
    echo "”;
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator($directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    $path = $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    echo “”;
    }
    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo ‘No images found for this slideshow.’;
    }
    ?>

    Thanks in advance,

    Niels

  36. Alex Says:

    For anyone that was experiencing the same problem as me, I finally figured out the one broken image thing, it was because the slideshow was taking the .DS_store hidden file in the folder as an image and trying to display it, so deleting it did the trick. I feel pretty stupid lol

  37. Alexpt Says:

    I was looking for that php code.. works fine.. tks

  38. Michael Says:

    G’day Alan,

    Works great – I simplified the CSS for a borderless display and wrote in an Auto-refresh line as well. One question though – what would be a straight forward way for this to support multiple formats, possibly PDF or MP4? I assume you’d have to link the libraries/players for those formats into the script..

    Cheers,
    Michael

  39. Michael Says:

    And here’s one more tricky one.. Is there any way to get the PHP script to auto-generate a new page and refresh when content is changed in the image directory? Trying to save bandwidth by not getting our script to auto refresh every 10 mins.

  40. Kenneth Says:

    The code is good except for the problem of not showing the first/last image. Using your own images works fine but using else images causes this problem. I wonder why it should be this way. Well done for the good job but this problem has stopped me from using the code. Thanks again…

  41. Tim Says:

    This is great, thanks for that. I added a small line to check for the file extension of the files in the directory. This will only output files that end in “.jpg”:

    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator($directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    //get the file extension
    $fileExt = substr($item, strrpos($item, ‘.’) + 1);
    //only display files that end in jpg
    if ($fileExt == ‘jpg’) {
    $path = $directory . “/” . $item;
    echo “”;
    }
    }
    }

  42. Gabe Says:

    I am getting the following parse error:

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘{‘ in /home/vg008web07/94/29/2912994/bhamfashionweek/web/fullsite000/index.php on line 100

    Any ideas as to what the deal is? Here is my php:

    [code]
    <?php
    $directory = 'images/slideshow/' . $row['imageName'];
    try {
    // Styling for images
    echo "";
    foreach ( new DirectoryIterator("../" . $directory) as $item ) {
    if ($item->isFile()) {
    $path = "/" . $directory . "/" . $item;
    echo "";
    }
    }
    echo "";
    }
    catch(Exception $e) {
    echo 'No images found for this player.';
    }
    ?>
    [/code]

  43. alan Says:

    Gabe: I can’t spot an error, and an online PHP syntax checker doesn’t detect any either in your code.

    Two questions:

    1. What version of PHP is your server running? You can check with your host provider or run php_info(); on your page to see a report.

    2. What line in your PHP does line 100 appear to point to?

  44. Gabe Says:

    Ahh, it was the PHP version. Upgraded and all is working. So sorry to miss something so small!

    Also, thanks for your speedy response!!! Great plugin/work!

  45. alan Says:

    Gabe: Excellent – glad you got it working… no worries at all Happy coding!

  46. Victor Says:

    Awesome code, working fine for me, thanks for sharing…..

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  48. treck Says:

    The problem is that when you get the filename of the first image, it includes the .DS_Store file. So if you’re directory is www/images/, the first file will read as, www/images/.DS_Store. You have to check to make sure that it only includes .jpg, .png etc …

  49. blex Says:

    is there a way to make this compatible with jquery 1.4.2?

  50. blex Says:

    also, my slideshow sits in a header file that way it will always display no matter what page, however the current path “images/slideshow/” only works on the homepage because its appended to the base url “example.com” but when you go to another page “example.com/page1″ it doesn’t load because i’m assuming it’s searching for “example.com/page1/images/slideshow/”. anyway around this?

  51. Alok Says:

    Really good code but a single problems :

    When i used this slide show a blank image run in my script name
    Thumb.jpg i don’t understand this error

    Please help me

  52. alan Says:

    blex – I’ve recently updated the demo page to use jQuery 1.4.4 and it works just fine:

    http://www.ampedwebstandards.com/demos/dynamic-image-slideshow-php-jquery/

  53. alan Says:

    blex – as for the slideshow in a header file and it handling different paths, you could update the line that says:

    $directory = ‘images/slideshow/’;

    to be something like this:

    $directory =’/images/slideshow/’;

    That way the script would always look for the images folder in the root of your domain. If that doesn’t solve the problem for you, let me know and I’ll work out a way to make the script more flexible or take the path as an optional argument related to the current page the php file is getting loaded from.

  54. alan Says:

    treck:

    I’ve got an updated version of the script that only displays files with certain extensions working. I just need to do a little more testing with it and then I’ll update the page with a new download verison.

    Alan

  55. Ssemwanga Says:

    when i do as you demonstrated i got no error but again there no image playing so what can i do

  56. alan Says:

    Ssemwanga – is this your first comment here? You make it sound as if you have tried this tutorial more than once with no success.

    Do you see the message “No images found for this player” on the page where you are trying to create the slideshow? Do you see other text on the page (that you wrote) or is it blank?
    Do you have access to your server logs?

    Another idea is to try adding a small snippet of PHP code *after* where you are attempting to display the slideshow. In this way, you can see if the slideshow is causing an error in PHP where it won’t continue to process PHP code on your page.

    Just add something like this < ?php echo "Made it here!" ?>

  57. Lorrie Gilboy Says:

    Hey, I really don’t think saying this on your post Tutorial: Dynamic slideshow with PHP & JQuery would be the appropriate place but I couldn’t locate a contact page form within your somewhat messy theme (sorry). My readers would always tell me exactly the same thing so I switched over to a new theme from http://tinyurl.com/themeforestz. I’ve only gotten kind comments after. Regards, Lorrie Gilboy

  58. Iomoio Says:

    I know this is really boring and you are skipping to the next comment, but I just wanted to throw you a big thanks – you cleared up some things for me!

  59. Tamika Hunstiger Says:

    good blog man, I really admire your writing style that you are using for your posts and stuff, really hollywood…

  60. gare Says:

    Hi Alan,

    Thanks for the clearly written demo. To be honest, the download package is a total winner! An entire working example to reverse engineer!

    Awesome.

    Keep up the great work. I’ll look around your site briefly to click on some ads, if you have any. :)

    gare

  61. William Rouse Says:

    It would be nice to add a Next and Back button. How would you do this?

  62. alan Says:

    William – I think that would be doable. I’ll take a crack at adding that and adding it as a configuration option. I’ll update the tutorial and the download if I can work it out in the next week or so, and add a comment. Check back in a few!

  63. William Rouse Says:

    Thanks for looking into it Alan.
    WBR

  64. طراحی سایت Says:

    please put slideshows that independence from languages

  65. Stray Says:

    This is great. Thank you! I’ve been trying to make a JQuery/PHP slideshow work for one of my clients and this tutorial is so clear and useful. Working wonderfully.

  66. Renu Says:

    Hi Allan

    I went through the tutorial and its a real help for someone whose new to php and jquery too. I wanted a help regarding the slideshow content. Is there any way through which we can also add content for the slideshow as per the image. I appreciate any quick response from your side.

    Thanks in advance.

    Renu.

  67. alan Says:

    Renu – are you asking about having text or html associated with each image in the slideshow? If so, yes… have definitely thought about that for my own use. I haven’t come up with a clean solution that wouldn’t take away from the easy way of adding new content that I have in place right now though. One thought would be to have the slideshow code look for a file like “descriptions.txt” that it could parse and add descriptions/captions for any matching filenames in that file. If it didn’t find one, it would still just show the image as it does today. If that sounds good I’ll add that to my future features for this tutorial and post an update in a future version.

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