Img to a stream

Forgive me if my question is confuing, but I am confused so asking the question properly is difficult. Currently, I have a PHP application that produces barcodes in HTML. It uses the following line: // Create the Barcode if ($obj) {

    if ($obj->DrawObject($xres)) {
        echo "<td><img src='./image.php?code=" . $barcode . "&style=" . $style . "&type=" . $type .
                "&width=" . $width . "&height=" . $height . "&xres=" . $xres . "&font=" . $font . "'></td>";
    } else {
        echo "<td><font color='#FF0000'>" . ($obj->GetError()) . "</font></td>";
    }

} else { echo "<td><font color='#FF0000'>Obj is false; Barcode = " . $barcode . "</font></td>"; } where image.php is creating the image. Now I need to do the same thing except for a PDF file.. In the following code, I am reading in a JPEG file, but I want to avoid the use of a file, and want to use a "data stream" instead. $fn = "dsc_5525.jpg"; $fh = fopen($fn, "r"); $data = fread($fh, filesize($fn)); fclose($fh); $image = $pdf->jfif_embed($data); $pdf->image_place($image, 50, 0, $firstpage); In other words, I want to put the barcode date into $data and I am not sure how to do this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Todd --