PHP Image prints out garbage - php

Question

Attempting to print out an image to the browser using code I copied from http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagecopyresampled.php.
It prints out a box of random characters.
CODE:
public function printSummaryArticle($article, $copy, $thumb) {
$src_image = Config::getAbsPath() . '/images/articles/' . $article['image'];
echo
'<div class="summary_article"><a href="/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(1)
. '/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(2)
. '/article/'
. $article['id']
. '"><h4>'
. $article['title']
. '</h4></a> ('
. $article['date']
. ')'
. '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,'. imagejpeg($thumb->generateThumb($src_image, 300, 200)) . '"'
. '<p>'
. strip_tags($copy->truncateString($article['body'], 250, " "))
. '</p><p><a href="/' . BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(1)
. '/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(2)
. '/article/'
. $article['id']
. '"> Read more</a></p></div>';
}
Also tried:
public function printSummaryArticle($article, $copy, $thumb) {
$src_image = Config::getAbsPath() . '/images/articles/' . $article['image'];
echo
'<div class="summary_article"><a href="/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(1)
. '/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(2)
. '/article/'
. $article['id']
. '"><h4>'
. $article['title']
. '</h4></a> ('
. $article['date']
. ')';
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
imagejpeg($thumb->generateThumb($src_image, 300, 200));
echo
'<p>'
. strip_tags($copy->truncateString($article['body'], 250, " "))
. '</p><p><a href="/' . BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(1)
. '/'
. BreadCrumbs::getCrumb(2)
. '/article/'
. $article['id']
. '"> Read more</a></p></div>';
}
Same result. except with an added error claiming headers have already been sent.
How can I fix this?

Answer 1

imagejpeg() neither returns a string nor performs Base64 encoding. To work around this, capture its output in a PHP output buffer, and then Base64 encode the captured output:
ob_start();
imagejpeg( $my_img );
echo '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,' . base64_encode(ob_get_clean()) . '">';
Note that data: URLs are limited to 32 KB in Internet Explorer 8 and do not work in earlier versions of IE (source). If you need to support IE 8 and below, you may want to instead save the image as a separate file on the server. This is left as an exercise for the reader :)
(For an explanation of the "Headers already sent" warning, see How to fix "Headers already sent" error in PHP.)

Answer 2

You haven't closed the image tag, but more importantly you haven't base64_encoded the image data
Before you echo that string
ob_start();
imagejpeg($thumb->generateThumb($src_image, 300, 200));
$imagejpg=ob_get_clean();
then this
. '<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,'
. base64_encode($imagejpg)
. '" />'
You can't do what you're trying to do in the 2nd example