Display binary data in browser - garbled

ywickham

I've been working on my project since 1:30 pm (it is now 2 am!) and I'm very tired. I'm obviously not understanding something here, so I'm hoping a second pair of eyes can see what I'm doing wrong. I'm storing an image (along with other data) per record in a table. Users browse their hard drive to select the image they want to upload when they click the submit button using the "Browse" button. Here is snippet code from the form:

<pre>
<form method="post" action="<?=$PHP_SELF; ?>" enctype="multipart/form-data">
<input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="1000000">
.
.
.
<input name="petfile" type="file" size="40">
.
.
.
</form>
</pre>

Upon Submit, I open and read the file, store it, and get the file type:

<pre>
$petdata = addslashes(fread(fopen($petfile, "r"), filesize($petfile)));
$filetype = $petfile_type;
</pre>

I then use this new variable to update/add the record to the database. (Yes, column "petpic" is a blob.):

<pre>
UPDATE pet SET petpic = '$petdata' WHERE petid = '$petid';
</pre>

When the page posts to itself, I want the image to display on the page, so I requery the database for the updated informatin and setup the following HTML tags to display the picture:

This is where my problem comes in. Instead of getting a picture displayed on the page, I get a whole screens worth of garbage in my code and then my form will begin after that. I tried setting the header, but then I get an error saying that the header information has already been sent.

I would be so grateful for any guidance I can receive!

Anon

My recommendation is to get a good sleep...

What goes in the src="" attribute is a URL to an image file and you're trying to put the actual image data itself in there, and no way is that going to look anything like a URL!

I offer two solutions. The first is the one I'd recommend.

1)
Don't store the picture directly into the database - all you're doing is using it as a woefully inefficient filesystem. Save it instead in a directory somewhere, and store its filename in the database. Then your <img> tag will become
<img src="path/to/pet/images/$petpic"> (assuming that you still call the column $petpic). It will be way faster and much less resource-hungry.

2)
Put the URL to a script in the src="" attribute, with a querystring attached, like
<img src="showpic.php?pic=$petid">.

What showpic.php then does is select the appropriate petpic from the database and echos it, after first sending a content header:

<?
...
/ getting $petpic is from the database /
...
header('Content-type:image/jpeg');
echo $petpic;
?>

This assumes that $petpic is indeed a JPEG. A different image file format will need a suitably modified header.

ywickham

Thank you!

It took me a while to re-write and re-arrange some of my code, but copying to a directory will definitely make my life easier, as I can also move along with other things.

And tonight I'll go to bed three hours earlier...

Thanks again,
Yazmin