xparq / AnimGif

PHP class to create an animated GIF from multiple images

NOTE: This is a fork of Clément Guillemain's nice GifCreator class, with some API changes (class rename, new & updated methods, more flexible (and robust) parameter handling etc.), better error handling, several small corrections, code cosmetics & other improvements scattered all across.

About

AnimGif is a PHP class to create animated GIFs -- just list the source images (in various forms), and that's it!

Usage

1. Inputs:

// Use an array containing file paths, resource vars (initialized with imagecreatefromXXX), 
// image URLs or binary image data.
$frames = array(
    imagecreatefrompng("/../images/pic1.png"),      // resource var
    "/../images/pic2.png",                          // image file path
    file_get_contents("/../images/pic3.jpg"),       // image binary data
    "http://thisisafakedomain.com/images/pic4.jpg", // URL
);

// Or: load images from a dir (sorted, skipping .files):
//$frames = "../images";

// Optionally: set different durations (in 1/100s units) for each frame
$durations = array(20, 30, 10, 10);

// Or: you can leave off repeated values from the end:
//$durations = array(20, 30, 10); // use 10 for the rest
// Or: use 'null' anywhere to re-apply the previous delay:
//$durations = array(250, null, null, 500);

2. Create the GIF:

$anim = new GifCreator\AnimGif();
$anim->create($frames, $durations);

// Or: using the default 100ms even delay:
//$anim->create($frames);

// Or: loop 5 times, then stop:
//$anim->create($frames, $durations, 5); // default: infinite looping

3. Get/use the result:

You can now get the animated GIF binary:

$gif = $anim->get();

...and e.g. send it directly to the browser:

header("Content-type: image/gif");
echo $gif;
exit;

Or just save it to a file:

$anim->save("animated.gif");

Behavior

• Transparency is based on the first frame. [!!NOT VERIFIED: "It will be saved only if you give multiple frames with the same transparent background"]
• The dimensions of the generated GIF are based on the first frame, too. If you need to resize your images to get the same dimensions, you can use this class: https://github.com/Sybio/ImageWorkshop.

Dependencies

• PHP 5.3 (for namespace support & whatnot; noone still shamelessly uses PHP < 5.3, right?!)
• GD (imagecreatefromstring, imagegif, imagecolortransparent)

Credits

• László Zsidi: All the tough parts come from his GIFEncoder.class.php (also found here, in a Gist). Thanks, Laci!
• Clément Guillemain: for the very handy, redesigned (& "classified") API, extensions and nice docs!
• Matthew Flickinger: for his amazing, unbeatable GIF format dissection page.