Image Gallery with a loop

HI,

I am trying to implement an image gallery with css lightbox and facing a php issue.
My gallery snippet is as follows:

<article>
<?php $i = 1; foreach($page->images() as $image): ?>
   <a href="#img<?php echo $i ?>">
    <img src="<?php echo thumb($image, array('width' => 450))->url() ?>" alt="<?php echo html($image->title()) ?>">
    </a>
<div class="lightbox" id="img<?php echo $i ?>">
<a href="#img<?php echo $i-- ?>" class="light-btn btn-prev">prev</a>
<a href="#_" class="btn-close">X</a>
 <img src="<?php echo $image->url() ?>" alt="<?php echo html($image->title()) ?>">
  <a href="#img<?php echo $i++ ?>" class="light-btn btn-next">next</a>
  </div>
  <?php $i++;   endforeach ?>
</article>

It works for displaying the large size image but not working for the prev and next image button. When clicking on prev/next button it comes back to the whole gallery.
Thank for any help

The code looks alright, you should probably use an if statement for the prev and next buttons, so that they are not displayed if there is no next/prev button.

It think it’s rather a CSS issue.

@hardboiled:
I cannot find the anchors like <a name=" .. " or id=" .. " in the code above, you have published.

The id is in the lightbox div, the markup is ok.

Don’t use $var++ and $var-- when displaying a variable. The way it works is a bit tricky: it returns the old value, not the new one. If you want to return the new value, you have to use the ++ or -- operator in front of the variable name, like this: ++$var, --$var.

Frankly that’s a bit messy and you’re going to confuse yourself or confuse the next person working on this code. Avoid it, if you can.

If I take your code and just keep the parts where you use the $i variable:

<?php $i = 1; foreach([0,0] as $test): ?>
  Current: <?php echo $i ?><br>
  Previous: <?php echo $i-- ?><br>
  Next: <?php echo $i++ ?><br><br>
<?php $i++; endforeach ?>

… for two iterations the result looks like this:

Current: 1
Previous: 1
Next: 0

Current: 2
Previous: 2
Next: 1

What you want to do is only increment the value of $i at the end of the iteration. So only use $i++ at the end, and when trying to get the other values use $i - 1 and $i + 1. That would be a start, though it won’t fix your loop needs.

Side note: with your current HTML code you are embedding EVERY BIG IMAGE IN THE PAGE. That’s a performance nightmare if your big images are heavy (like hundreds of kilobytes or, worse, a few megabytes — which you should never ever have on a website obviously). Browsers are still going to download these images even if your CSS or JS code hides them, because at the time when the browser requests the page’s resources (CSS, JS, images etc.) it doesn’t know if they are going to be hidden or not.

There are some good image gallery scripts out there that recommend more reasonable markup, such as:

<ul class="gallery">
  <li><a href="big-image-1.jpg"><img src="thumb-1.jpg" alt="Alt text for that image"></a></li>
  <li><a href="big-image-2.jpg"><img src="thumb-2.jpg" alt="Alt text for that image"></a></li>
  <li><a href="big-image-3.jpg"><img src="thumb-3.jpg" alt="Alt text for that image"></a></li>
</ul>

Without JS, it’s a list of small images that link to the bigger images. Ideally, each image (and thus each link) should have relevant alternative text. Then, with JS, when clicking the small image you can get a full-screen gallery.

Some good scripts: Photoswipe, Magnific Popup, and a few more.

1 Like

Thanks for your advise and explanations.
You are correct when saying that it’s messy and confusing. It’s actually what I am facing with very erratic incrementation results.
I defnitively follow your recommendation to use one of the scripts and to improve the perfs.
Note that I am not a developer therefore I am learning by playing with the code and benefiting from the very responsive kirby forum’s helps.
Thanks again