ChartDirector Ver 4.1 (Ruby Edition)
BaseChart.makeTmpFile
Usage
makeTmpFile(dirname [, imageFormat [, lifeTime ]])
Description
Generates the chart as an image and save it to a temporary file, and automatically remove old files.
The makeTmpFile method creates the temporary file in the directory specified by dirname. To avoid building up of too many temporary files, it will automatically remove all files older than a certain life time (default 600 seconds) in that directory.
Note that the dirname is a file system path, not a URL path. For example, the directory "/tmp/tmpcharts" means a path relative to the root of the hard disk, not the root of the web document directory.
If makeTmpFile is unsuccessful, an empty string will be returned. In this case, please check that the temporary directory exists, and is readable and writable by the web server anonymous user .
It is highly recommended you use a dedicated directory for storing temporary files created by ChartDirector. This is to avoid makeTmpFile from accidentally removing old files belonging to other applications.
Arguments
Argument | Default | Description |
dirname | (Mandatory) | The directory to store the temporary file and to remove old files. |
imageFormat | PNG | A constant representing the format of the image. Must be one of the predefined constants PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP or WMP. |
lifeTime | 600 | The life time of files in seconds. Older files will be deleted. A negative value disables automatic temporary file removal. |
Return Value
The temporary file name (not including the path), or an empty string in case of failure.
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