PHP Google Image Search Library

30Jan2011

Sometime ago, I found myself wanting to be able to programatically perform a Google image search (it was for album art on the music page). As Google does not provide an API for backend scripting, I wrote a quick scraper that does the job quite nicely. Hit the break for info on how to use this.

Code: php

include ('gis.php');
$results = googleImageSearch('chobits');
print_r($results);
?>

Here's the function prototype:

Code: php

googleImageSearch($query, $page = 1, $size = GIS_ANY, $type = GIS_ANY);
?>

This returns an array of stdObject with the following properties:

resultLink - Link to Google image result. This is the page that displays when you click a result through normal image search
source - URL of the source image
title - Title associated with the image
width - Width of the image
height - Height of the image
size - Size of the image
type - Format of the image (jpg, png, etc)
domain - Domain of source image
thumb - stdObject with information on Google's thumbnail of the image. Properties are:
thumb->src - URL to the thumbnail
thumb->width - Width of the thumbnail
thumb->height - Height of the thumbnail

Size constants are (all fairly self-explanatory):

GIS_LARGE
GIS_MEDIUM
GIS_SMALL

And constants for type:

GIS_FACE
GIS_PHOTO
GIS_CLIPART
GIS_LINEART

If you have any comments, questions or issues with this code, just leave a comment below and I'll do my best to help you!

Comments

Posted on April 14, 2011 by irphan

Hi ,iam unable to download the gis.php file . please help me

Posted on April 14, 2011 by dxprog

@irphan Fixed the link. Sorry about that!

Posted on May 15, 2011 by sasha

hi i have a problem

how can i reed this array?

Array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [resultLink] => http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ibn9q9HHe9k/TEbQJDXRipI/AAAAAAAADIA/U5mbwr2iDY8/S350/books_1.gif&imgrefurl=http://granan10.blogspot.com/2011/05/question-of-week-5-9-11.html&usg=__hRG5oDSprICmg-mYJ3xL4lh8xl0=&h=300&w=300&sz=28&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&itbs=1 [source] => http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ibn9q9HHe9k/TEbQJDXRipI/AAAAAAAADIA/U5mbwr2iDY8/S350/books_1.gif [title] => book [width] => 300 [height] => 300 [size] => 28 [type] => gif [domain] => granan10.blogspot.com [thumb] => stdClass Object ( [src] => http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcThU5ZkFkLEXWUgxI6EtFGWhIKYdZrJL4anTBoh-qzfyRrFvKCkmr3GORI [width] => 116 [height] => 116 ) ) [1] => stdClass Object ( [resultLink] => http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uiwp.uiuc.edu/porfolio_2008/erin_ludwick/BOOK.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uiwp.uiuc.edu/porfolio_2008/erin_ludwick/index.html&usg=__t-8VjUtG2hj0LmCE6OlCD3X5rpE=&h=435&w=700&sz=175&hl=en&start=2&zoom=1&itbs=1 [source] => http://www.uiwp.uiuc.edu/porfolio_2008/erin_ludwick/BOOK.jpg [title] => Book Clubs [width] => 700 [height] => 435 [size] => 175 [type] => jpg [domain]

Posted on May 16, 2011 by dxprog

I would use a foreach loop, like so:

foreach ($results as $result) {

echo $result->source;

}

Hope that helps ya!

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Gokul

How to increase the image count in search

Posted on May 30, 2011 by dxprog

Google itself limits the count and, as far as I'm aware, there's not way around that outside of multiple requests for each page of data.

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Amit

Great jobs

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Smith

Hi!

Thank you for really great script!

I have a little problem with it. There is no Width and height and size in a resulting Object for all full images. Here is an example:

[14] => stdClass Object

(

[resultLink] => http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://st.kinopoisk.ru/im/wallpaper/1/0/8/kinopoisk.ru-Beatrice-Rosen-1081628--w--1280.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.kinopoisk.ru/picture/1081628/w_size/1280/&usg=__PJnNr_R0Nh_tWUvKJDu7SL_mLLQ=&h=960&w=1280&sz=101&hl=ru&start=15&zoom=1&itbs=1

[source] => http://st.kinopoisk.ru/im/wallpaper/1/0/8/kinopoisk.ru-Beatrice-Rosen-1081628--w--1280.jpg

[title] => ÐÐµÐ°ÑÑÐ¸Ñ Ð Ð¾Ð·ÐµÐ½ (Beatrice Rosen)

[width] =>

[height] =>

[size] =>

[type] => jpg

[domain] => kinopoisk.ru

[thumb] => stdClass Object

(

[src] => http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJRQBfT-0YkeU1GvGByFc38NqKH2xUr8mEJu6KAJDgV4AGvOdnA2aqBOYa

[width] => 150

[height] => 113

)

Can you help me to solve this problem?

Posted on June 3, 2011 by dxprog

Interesting. What was your search query?

Posted on September 28, 2011 by thger

Hi, do you know how to display the picture? Currently, its all in text form.

Thanks

Posted on October 1, 2011 by dxprog

@thger Could you elaborate? You are writing the url into an image tag, yes? (unless you're doing something different entirely)

Posted on October 12, 2011 by monty

hi, i have followed everything to the letter but all i get is an empty array returned. any ideas on how to fix this. ( print_r($results) gives me Array ()

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Mowiba

Hi, Thanks for this.

One problem is that URL of source is not returned.

This is also the case for your example http://labs.dxprog.com/gis/

Any ideas?

Thanks.

Posted on January 21, 2012 by shipar

Hi,

your demo does,t work.

Can you please tell me how It works?

And how your script run?

thanks

Posted on January 23, 2012 by dxprog

@shipar Sure enough. Looks like Google changed up their code (always an issue with writing scrapers). I'll have to rework the library.

Posted on April 5, 2012 by plrtowprdpress

"Google changed up" their code for Images? so we have to find out [smile]

Posted on May 21, 2012 by jnana

Hi please do some help for me,,,, m beginner of PHP how to retrieve the first image from the google search.......

plz help me to solve this problem

Posted on May 21, 2012 by jnana

Hi i hv tried ur above sample code but it does't work... plz inform me about which version php software i need to install now m usingeasyphp5.3.8.0

Posted on May 21, 2012 by dxprog

@jnana Google has since changed their code and my library no longer works. Such is life when messing with scrapers.

matt hackmann - web developer - artist - nerd

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PHP Google Image Search Library

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