Generate thumbnail for text file

Question

Suppose a user uploads a .txt or .php file, and I want to generate a .png thumbnail for it. Is there a simple way of doing it, that doesn't require me to open the file and write its contents into a new .png? I have ImageMagick and FFmpeg available, there must be a way to take advantage of that, but I've been looking a lot and no luck yet.

Thanks in advance.

I've seen lots of tuts on how to convert various image formats to a thumbnail. But I haven't been able to find anything on converting a .txt file, but I'm sure it can be done. The thumbnail isn't going to be very meaningful for just a text file. — dmikester1, Apr 02 '13 at 19:14
True, but it can give an idea of the length and density of the text. — Sophivorus, Apr 02 '13 at 19:44
I found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3826379/image-magick-converting-text-to-image-is-there-a-way-to-center-the-text-to-t — dmikester1, Apr 02 '13 at 19:54

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 31 '17 at 17:04

You can use ffmpeg:

 ffmpeg -video_size 640x480 -chars_per_frame 60000 -i in.txt -frames:v 1 out.png

However, it has some caveats:

By default it renders 6000 characters per frame, so it may not draw all of your text. You can change this with the -chars_per_frame and/or -framerate input options. Default frame rate is 25.
The text will not be automatically word wrapped so you will have to add line breaks for the text to fit your output video size.

Unseen Revolution · Answer 2 · 2013-04-04T17:52:13.180

2

You could always use php's imagettftext function.

It would give you a representation of what is in the text file.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagettftext.php

edited Apr 04 '13 at 17:52

answered Apr 02 '13 at 19:58

Unseen Revolution

163
4

+1. I would use this approach too. Seems the simplest and most efficient way of doing things. – Joel Murphy Apr 02 '13 at 20:05

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 06 '16 at 09:29

You can use PHP's class imagick to convert the file to image. It will work for a txt file nicely.

try
{
   $im = new imagick("inputfile.txt[0]");
   if ($im)
   {
      $im->setImageAlphaChannel(imagick::ALPHACHANNEL_DEACTIVATE);
      $im->setImageFormat('jpg');
      $im->setImageCompressionQuality(85);
      file_put_contents("outfile.jpg",$im->getImageBlob());
   }
} catch(Exception $e)
{
    echo "cannot process";
}

// When imagick is unable to read the file, it may wrongly
// set internal server error 500 status code.
// I do not understand why that happens, because the script
// continues normally. Anyway, lets overwrite it here for all cases.
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 17 '19 at 22:10

1

$image = new Imagick();
$image->readImage("text:" . $filename . "[0]");
$image->resizeImage($width, $height, Imagick::FILTER_LANCZOS, 1);
$image->setImageFormat('png');
$image->writeImage($linkImage);

answered Feb 17 '19 at 22:10

Mr Adrian Ireland

11
1

Generate thumbnail for text file

4 Answers4

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