Extension:Picasa2Gallery

What can this extension do?
This is a MediaWiki extension that I wrote because I wanted to create a gallery where you don't have to describe the content of gallery picture by picture. Picasa2, a perfect picture organizer made by Google. I have used it for a couple of years and I discovered the possibility of exporting an album to *.xml file containing descriptions of pictures and thumbnails. I have had all my photos alredy sorted in albums and labeled. Therefore I decided to use it as a base of this extension.

If you want to use it, download Picasa2, let it search your photos, resort and labeled them and then export your albums as a *.xml albums. The Picasa2Gallery also automatically upload the images from Picasa to the MediaWiki server. If the default thumbnail size from Picasa2 is not suitable for you, you can easily change it in the templates directory of Picasa2. (The same you can do with thumbnails frame color, etc.)

Usage
Type on the page where you want to see your album this tags    with proper parameters. This extension generates picture gallery from Picasa2 XML export saved in your location. Example of usage: Description of the album

Installation
Download, unzip and copy source files to your extension's directory. To activate this extension, include it from your LocalSettings.php with: include("extensions/Picasa2.php"); Edit Picasa2.php and change variable $galleryDir to absolute or relative path to your gallery dir with regards to wiki directory. Example: $galleryDir = "/gallery"; - it means /mediawiki/gallery

Parameters
Here's a complete parameter list:
 * dirName : (essential parameter), denotes the name of a directory in $galleryDir path (for setting $galleryDir see bellow). This directory contains the exported Picasa data -- the XML data file (named index.xml, then the path is $galleryDir/directory_name/index.xml) and subdirectories with images and thumbnails.
 * showTitle : (optional parameter, default 1(means TRUE))
 * if it is set to 1, then the album name and the number of photos is displayed


 * showLarge : (optional parameter, default 1(means TRUE))
 * if it is set to 1, then the thumbnails are the link to the enlarged images, otherwise only thumbnails can be seen


 * multiSet : (optional parameter, default 1(TRUE))
 * if it is set to 1, then enlarged images are cross-linked. By enlarging of the one image, you can directly move on previous or next image. Otherwise every image is enlarged separately.

Note
You can use this extension also with earlier version... but you will see some undef labels in 'edit' mode. You have to edit one file (I am not sure which one now).... Or can download version 1.0 which can be found on my homepage.. (see download)