JP2002024078A - Image file management server - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent the failure of an image file address to be caused when a Web page is referred to by mitigating a maintenance work of a URL address as much as possible when a physical position of an image file to be referred to is changed in the Web page. SOLUTION: When display specification of the image file exists in the Web page to which a display request is made from a Web browser 308, an image management Web server 309 receives a discrimination ID to specify the image file, retrieves a URL by referring to an image information repository 303, transmits the retrieved URL to the Web browser 308 or transmits information to transmit the image file to the Web browser 308 to a Web server 306 from which the display request of the Web page is made.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to an image file management server for efficiently managing image files existing at a plurality of sites in an Internet environment, and more particularly, to a Web server that shares these image files with each other. An image file management server that is effective when creating a page.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, in the Internet environment,
Computer users can easily access WWW (World W
By accessing using an ide Web browser, various homepages opened on the WWW can be read to obtain necessary information. If an image such as a photograph or a picture is pasted on a part of a text page displayed on a computer screen of a user, only that image is obtained from an image file of another site and is included in an HTML file. May be attached to the department.

In general, a URL (Uniform Res)
It is difficult to manage resources such as an image file and a Web page specified by a source locator because the resources are distributed to a plurality of sites. For example, U.S. Pat.
In the RL information database construction method, a method is disclosed in which sites to be managed are classified hierarchically, and resource URLs are efficiently collected and managed. At this time, there are a relative specification format and an absolute specification format for the URL format used for specifying the resource, and the absolute specification format is used when referring to a resource of another site. The absolute format is a combination of the address of the site where the resource resides and the path name on that machine.

[0004]

When an image file is referred to by a URL consisting of an absolutely designated format site address and an image file path as in the above-mentioned prior art, the convenience of the site that owns the image file (for example, a new If the image file is moved to another directory or another machine because of the use of the image file in the Web page to be launched, the image file cannot be referred to the Web page of another site. Would. Further, in order to eliminate such a reference defect, there is a problem that the URLs in all the Web pages that refer to the same image file must always be maintained to be the same.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide an image file management server which solves these conventional problems and can prevent a trouble when referring to a Web page without performing the above-mentioned maintenance work. It is to be.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, an image file management server according to the present invention is an image file management server for managing image files held on distributed Web servers, An image information repository in which an identification ID for specifying a file and an address indicating a storage location of an image file corresponding to the identification ID are stored in association with each other, and in order to download the image file to a web browser, When the identification ID of the image file is received, an address corresponding to the identification ID is searched using the image information repository, and the searched address is transmitted to the Web browser. Further, an image information repository is stored in which an identification ID for specifying the image file is associated with an address indicating a storage location of the image file corresponding to the identification ID, and the image file is downloaded to a Web browser. When the identification ID of the image file is received from the Web server, an address corresponding to the identification ID is searched using the image information repository, and the searched address is transmitted to the Web server.

[0007] Further, there is provided an image information repository in which an identification ID for specifying the image file and an address indicating a storage location of the image file corresponding to the identification ID are stored in association with each other, and displayed from a Web browser to a Web server. When the display of the image file is specified in the requested Web page, an identification ID for specifying the image file is received, an address is searched by referring to the image information repository, and the searched address is displayed on the Web browser. Or W
The information for transmitting the image file to the Web browser is transmitted to the Web server that has requested the display of the Web page. As a result, the physical address of the image file is hidden from the user, and the maintainability of a Web page referring to the image files of a plurality of sites can be improved. As a result, We
Reference to the image file in page b can always point to the latest location, and if the creation and update of the image file at each site is performed by connecting to the image management server, no special maintenance work is required.

[0008]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a system configuration diagram including an image file management server according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, an image management Web server 101 and an image information repository 103 connected thereto
Is a management server newly installed in the present invention and a dedicated database for image information. The information stored in the image information repository 103 includes a URL of an image file of each site and a unique resource ID (identification ID for identifying the image file) assigned to the URL.
D). FIG. 1 shows a Web server 102 connected to an image file 104, a Web page file 105 using image information stored in the image file 104, and a Web server 106 connected thereto.
Are shown one by one, but in reality, many image files and Web page files are distributed and exist in each site. Image management Web server 101
Holds the information of the URL and the resource ID of the image file 104 stored in the Web server 102 in the image information repository 103. This information is
When the b-page file 105 refers to the image file, it is used to convert the resource ID into a URL.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing a method of adding and updating an image file in the image information repository in FIG. The user performs an additional update operation using the image management HTML page 201 and the Web browser 10.
Repeat from step 2. HTML page 201 for image management
Creates an image addition / update message 202 including the image file URL input by the user, and sends the message to the image management ASP page 203 in the image management Web server 101. ASP page 2 for image management
At step 03, the transmitted additional update message 202 is analyzed, and if necessary, a unique resource ID is assigned to the image file 104, and the image information repository 10
3 is stored. The contents of the information stored in the image information repository 103 are shown in FIG. 5 described later, and the information contents of the image addition / update message are shown in FIG. 6 described later.

FIG. 5 is a data structure diagram of the image information repository in the present invention. As shown in FIG.
L (401), title (402), creator name (40
3) is input by the user when the image file is added. The resource ID (404) is an identifier assigned to the image file by the image management ASP page (203 in FIG. 2). The example in FIG. 5 has a data structure corresponding to the first embodiment for downloading an image file.

FIG. 6 is a structural diagram of an image addition / update message according to the present invention. Message type (50
1) is a character string representing addition or update. URL (5
02), title (503), and creator name (504)
This is setting information on the target image file. The resource ID (505) is necessary only for updating and identifies an existing image file. The example in FIG. 6 has a data structure corresponding to the first embodiment for downloading an image file.

(First Embodiment) FIG. 3 is an explanatory view of a process of downloading an image file according to a first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of requesting an identification ID from a server. The Web browser 308 shown in FIG.
A browser corresponding to the server 106, the image management Web server 309 corresponds to the image management Web server 101 in FIG. 1, and the Web server 304 connected to the image file 305 is the Web server 102 in FIG.
It corresponds to.

First, when the Web browser 308 issues a request for requesting the URL of the image reference HTML page 301, the Web server 306 transmits the HTML page 3.
07 and searches the searched HTML page 307 for W
Send it to the web browser 308. This HTML page 3
07 when there is an image file display request, W
The web browser 308 converts the identification ID (resource ID) of the image file written on the HTML page 307 into an ID-URL conversion ASP in the image management Web server 309 in order to download the image file.
Send to page 302. The ID-URL conversion ASP page 302 searches the image information repository 303, converts the resource ID into the corresponding URL, and returns it to the Web browser 308. The image reference HTML page 301 in the Web browser 308 issues a request to the Web server 304 based on the received URL, and as a result,
The image file 305 is downloaded. Finally, on the screen of the Web browser 308, the Web page is displayed in a form in which the downloaded image information is embedded in the HTML page 307 that has been read earlier.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a process of downloading an image file according to a second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example in which a Web server requests an identification ID from an image management Web server. In order to display the HTML page 313, the Web browser 311
The URL of the HTML page 313 is transmitted to the Web server 312. The Web server 312 searches the HTML database 313 to obtain a resource ID corresponding to the URL, and transmits the resource ID from the Web server 312 to the ID-address conversion ASP 316 in the image management Web server 318. Image management Web server 318
The ID-address conversion ASP 316 searches the image information repository 317, converts the resource ID into a corresponding address, and returns it to the Web server 312. Web
The server 312 replaces the previously acquired resource ID with the address just received, and returns it to the web browser 311 as an HTML image address. Upon receiving the image address, the Web browser 311 accesses the image address and requests download of the image file. As a result, the image file 31 connected to the Web server 314 of the image address
5 is downloaded to the Web browser 311.

As is apparent from FIG. 4, the image information repository 317 in the second embodiment stores the ID-address conversion ASP 316 of the image management Web server 318.
Therefore, since the resource ID needs to be converted into an address, an address (image address) is further added to the data structure of the image information repository shown in FIG. In the second embodiment, as the data structure of the image addition / update message shown in FIG. 6, the message type (501), the URL (502), the resource ID (50)
In addition to 5) or in place of the URL (502), it is necessary to store an address as message data.

[0016]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Management of distributed image files in the Internet environment is facilitated. Further, there is an effect that the sharing of the image file among a plurality of sites is facilitated, and the creation and maintenance of a Web page using the image file are also facilitated.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a configuration diagram of a system centered on an image file management server according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an image file addition / update process according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing processing at the time of referring to and downloading an image file according to the first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing a process for referring to and downloading an image file according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a data structure diagram of an image information repository in the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a data structure diagram of an image addition / update message according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

101: Image management Web server, 102, 106 ...
Web server, 103 ... Image information repository, 10
4 ... Image file, 105 ... Web page file, 201 ... Image management HTML page, 202 ... Additional update message, 203 ... Image management ASP page, 308,311 ... Web browser, 303,317 ...
Image information repository, 309, 318: Image management Web server, 305, 315: Image file,
401 ... URL, 402 ... Title, 307, 313 ...
HTML page file, 403 ... creator name, 306,
304, 312, 314: Web server, 404: Resource ID, 501: Message type, 502: URL,
503: title, 504: creator name, 505: resource ID.

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An image file management server for managing image files held on distributed Web servers, comprising: an identification ID for identifying the image file; and the identification ID.
An image information repository storing an image file corresponding to an address indicating a storage location of an image file corresponding to the image file, and receiving an identification ID of the image file from the Web browser in order to download the image file to a Web browser. Searching for an address corresponding to the identification ID using the image information repository;
An image file management server for transmitting a searched address to the Web browser. 2. An image file management server for managing image files stored on distributed Web servers, comprising: an identification ID for identifying the image file; and the identification ID.
An image information repository storing the image file in association with an address indicating a storage location of the image file corresponding to the image file. Upon receiving the identification ID of the image file from the Web server in order to download the image file to a Web browser, An image file management server, wherein an address corresponding to the identification ID is searched using the image information repository, and the searched address is transmitted to the Web server. 3. An image file management server which manages image files held on distributed Web servers, comprising: an identification ID for identifying the image file; and the identification ID.
When an image information repository is stored in association with an address indicating the storage location of the image file corresponding to the image file, and the display of the image file is specified in the Web page requested to be displayed by the Web browser to the Web server Receiving an identification ID identifying the image file, searching for an address by referring to the image information repository, and transmitting the searched address to the Web browser, or transmitting a Web page display request to the Web browser. An image file management server for transmitting information for transmitting the image file to the web browser to a server.