Product Images Location by URL - Feature Request

Dear friends:
Thanks for your great work and excellent support. I have a feature request.
Our site and servers get clogged with lots of images. Of course, we developers pay for the space and backups take longer.
Increasingly, we are storing images which you use our our sites on third party sites which are much less expensive or free. (Flickr, Google+)
Please consider allowing for product images to be referenced by URL. That would be very useful.
Appreciate the consideration,
Nadine at Solia.

Hi,

To integrate that in HikaShop it will require to change all the system, because currently we are generating thumbnails, and to generate the thumbnails we need to have the image stored in local.
A way could to to not generate the thumbnails but only the external image and apply css properties on it, not sure that it's the best solution but it could be possible.

For now, what can be done is to create custom produt fields, then fill the full image path of the image (on the external website). Finally edit the view "product / show_block_img" and replace the current image display function by an image tag like that:

<img src="<?php echo $this->row->CUSTOMFIELD_NAME; ?>" />

Any plan of implementing this function in the future ?

So all images could be hosted on another server, and all I had to do was to paste the image url path in order for it to display on the product page.

OK tnx for reply.

Is this something that could be done with a simple plugin ?

OK tnx for reply.

1. whould this code be the same for the main image of the product ?
Or should i write something different for the cutsom field for what would be the main image.

2. What product page view file would you recommend to place the code in ?

3. Can I use both image systems, any suggestion on what the code for that will be ?
I.e: I have some products using the standard system (images from the hikashop uppload folder - like I use now) and som for external image hosting.

Tnx for all advice, this sounds good.

You don't need a plugin. Just create a custom product field, and on the listing and the product page view files, instead of the code used to display the thumbnails, you could add such code:

Tnx for reply
So I have decided to keep the main image for the product using the standard Hikashop image system.

But I want to be able to use extenal images for the thumbnails.

I have created a custom field type "text" in the table "product".

So this is my code for the thumbanils I need to implement:

<?php if(!empty($this->row->001)){ ?>
<img src="<?php echo $this->row->bilde01; ?>"/>
<?php }else{ ?>

Could you please advice me where in the "show_block_img" file I should place this code ?Tnx for reply
So I have decided to keep the main image for the product using the standard Hikashop image system.

But I want to be able to use extenal images for the thumbnails.

I have created a custom field type "text" in the table "product".

So this is my code for the thumbanils I need to implement:

<?php if(!empty($this->row->001)){ ?>
<img src="<?php echo $this->row->bilde01; ?>"/>
<?php }else{ ?>

OK tnx for reply. So I've tried placing the code like this

<?php if(!empty($this->row->bilde01)){ ?>
<img src="<?php echo $this->row->bilde01; ?>"/>
<?php }else{ ?>
$img = $this->image->getThumbnail(@$image->file_path, array('width' => $width, 'height' => $height), $image_options);
						if(@$img->success) {
							$id = null;
							$classname='hikashop_child_image';
							if($firstThunb) {
								$id = 'hikashop_first_thumbnail'.$variant_name;
								$firstThunb = false;
								$classname.=' hikashop_child_image_active';
							}
							$attr = 'title="'.$this->escape(@$image->file_description).'" onmouseover="return window.localPage.changeImage(this, \'hikashop_main_image'.$variant_name.'\', \''.$img->url.'\', '.$img->width.', '.$img->height.', \''.str_replace("'","\'",@$image->file_description).'\', \''.str_replace("'","\'",@$image->file_name).'\');"';
							$html = '<img class="'.$classname.'" title="'.$this->escape(@$image->file_description).'" alt="'.$this->escape(@$image->file_name).'" src="'.$img->url.'"/>';
							if(empty($variant_name)) {
								echo $this->popup->image($html, $img->origin_url, $id, $attr, array('gallery' => 'hikashop_main_image'));
							} else {
								echo $this->popup->image($html, $img->origin_url, $id, $attr, array('gallery' => 'hikashop_main_image_VARIANT_NAME'));

OK tnx for reply

So when I use the above code I get the standard joomla page saying:

The requested page does not exist.

"0 syntax error, unexpected '<'"

Anyway... so this is the first paragraph of the code of above.

<?php if(!empty($this->row->bilde01)){ ?>
<img src="<?php echo $this->row->bilde01; ?>"/>
<?php }else{ ?>
$img = $this->image->getThumbnail(@$image->file_path, array('width' => $width, 'height' => $height), $image_options);
						if(@$img->success) {
							$id = null;
							$classname='hikashop_child_image';
							if($firstThunb) {
								$id = 'hikashop_first_thumbnail'.$variant_name;
								$firstThunb = false;
								$classname.=' hikashop_child_image_active';