Initilizing an image from a string intead of a file

[J.D.]

I am running ImageMagick from the command line, via PHP's exec() function. I need to convert an SVG image to PNG. Something like this:

exec('-convert image.svg image.png');

I need to get the contents of image.svg, and manipulate them before converting the file to PNG. Do I have to save the altered image.svg to a new file, or is there a way to write the PNG file from a string?

For example I would get the file into the $image variable like this:

$image = file_get_contents('image.svg');

Then I would manipulate $image, based on an outside input. How can I directly convert $image to a PNG image without having to save it first as an SVG image? Is that even possible?

[anthony]

You can specify an image on the command line, but there is command line limits, and the file needs to be converted to base64.

See IM Examples. File handling, inline:
http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/files/#inline

[J.D.]

Thank you for the reply. It looks like my image is too large for that, so I'll just have to save it as a file and then have the script delete the file once the conversion is complete.

[snibgo]

I don't know PHP, but it may allow piping, as in the command...

Code: Select all

convert - image.png

... where something has piped the SVG contents to stdout.