Scripts to catalogue and fetch phpBB in-line images that are externally hosted. These scripts should be compatible with phpBB v3.3.x and have been tested with phpBB v3.3.12 with php v8.2.22.
Useage:
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Create a scripts/ directory in your phpbb home directory
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Download the scripts to the scripts directory
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Run the script extract_external_links.php e.g. php ./extract_external_links.php This script will create 2 new database tables: external_images and external_image_links and scan the posts.post_text table for inline images matching the configured host it will display the number of in-line images found in each candidate post. For very large boards it may be neccessary to re-run the script multipe times to extract all of the image data from the database. Re-running the script after completion will start a new run that will pick up any subsequently added image links.
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Run the script download_external_images.php e.g. php ./download_external_images.php This script will create a directory images/ext and populate it by downloading all of the image files in the external_images_table. The files are named with the MD5 of the original URL. re-running this script is non-destructive, it will not erase any existing files even if the remote file has been removed or replased by a failure link or thumbnail.
There are several ways that the phpBB board could be made to serve these files using the information in the new database tables:
- A script could be written to upload the files as in-line attachments and update the posts.post_text table accordingly
- A script could be written to update the links in posts.post_text to point to the locally hosted files.
- A phpBB extension can be used to redirect image links to the locally hosted files without modifying posts.post_text.
I have implemented solution 3 as a phpBB 3.x extension v12mike/imageredirect ( https://github.com/v12mike/imageredirect ).