Can I hide broken images? - php

Question

I am trying to create a sidebar for which I can specify the image in the back-end of my wordpress cms using custom fields, now I have gotten it to work, with just one little bug, if the user enters a invalid URL, the image link will display as broken and will not display, is there a way that I can hide the broken image icon perhaps?
I have a background image set for the parent DIV element so that if there is no image to display, the parent's background will.
here is the PHP code:
//here I get the 'side_image' custom field, which will contain the URL to the side image
if (have_posts()) :
while (have_posts()) : the_post();
$side = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'side_image', true);
endwhile;
endif;
HTML:
<!--here is the HTML markup-->
<div id="inner_content_right">
<img src="<?php echo $side; ?>" />
</div>
CSS:
#inner_content_right {
background: url(images/Layout_3_other_06_backup.jpg) no-repeat;
width: 259px;
height: 691px;
float: right;
position: relative;
bottom: 28px;
}
Thanx in advance!

Answer 1

You could try something like
<!--here is the HTML markup-->
<div id="inner_content_right">
<img src="<?php if (#getimagesize($side)) echo $side; ?>" />
</div>

Answer 2

Thanx guys, I got it to work with this code!
//check if the string is a valid URL
function checkURL($url)
{
return preg_match('|^http(s)?://[a-z0-9-]+(.[a-z0-9-]+)*(:[0-9]+)?(/.*)?$|i', $url);
}
//returns a image with a valid URL or nothing at all
function validateImage($one){
if(!checkURL($one))
{
$errMsg .= "Please enter valid URL including http://";
//return $errMsg;
} else {
$headers = get_headers($one, 1);
$return = $headers[0];
if($return!='HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found'){
$string = "<img src='$one' />";
return $string;
}
}
}
Thanx for all your help!