Secure images failing - Codeigniter - php

Question

My script pretty much works, however when I run a for loop it fails, in the view:
<?php foreach($pics as $index=>$pic){?>
<td class='Pictures'>
<center>
<?php
$piece = explode('/',$pic["ThumbImg"]);
$string = $piece[5];
?>
<img src='<?php echo base_url(); ?>index.php/Controller/getImage/<?php echo $string; ?>/1' width="100px">
</a>
Controller class - Get image function:
//function to protect images from being accessed directly by obfuscating the URL
function getImage($img_id,$type){
if($this->members->logged_in()){
//code to authenticate user goes here then...
//code to decide which type of file it is/thumb/full size image
if($type==1)
{
$url = $this->data['base_url'].'system/application/images/pic/thumbs/';
}else if($type==0){
$url = $this->data['base_url'].'system/application/images/pic/';
}
$filepath = $url.$img_id;
//send image to web browser.
header("Content-type: image/jpeg");
//get path
$img_handle = imagecreatefromjpeg($filepath) or die("");
//create and send
ImageJpeg($img_handle);
}
I suspect that this could be due to the headers being resent, if so how can I resolve this.
Cheers
Fixed the problem - used "Hotlinking"

Answer 1

You will basically only need to set the header information header("Content-type: image/jpeg") if you're loading the image from the database. But since you're loading it from a folder you might want to skip the php file and immediately fetch the image from the folder:
<img src='<?php echo base_url(); ?>img_folder/<?php echo $string; ?>/1'
width="100px">