Uploading word files - database or directories

[dancahill]

I'm trying to implement a function where users can upload word files to the server.

My question is what is the best way of doing this. Is it better to write the word files to a directory & then insert the paths / id numbers into my database or is it better to store the files in the database directly?

I kind of prefer the 2nd option which is unfortunate as I don't know how to implement it. I can manage to copy the uploaded file to a directory on the server but not sure about storing the file in mySQL.

If anyone can tell me how to grab the file from the form and insert into the DB I would appreciate any pointers - field types (I assume a blob?), SQL statement etc.

Thanks,

Dan.

[mad27]

I have done it as follows:

the binary data goes into a LONGBLOB database record (MySQL)
the data is added with the following code:
$dataToSave = addslashes(fread(fopen($fileToSave, $fileSize)))

$sql = "INSERT INTO binaryData (binaryData) VALUES (\"$dataToSave\")";

$result = mysql_query($sql) or die (mysql_error());

$resultID = mysql_insert_id;

However I have encountered a small problem (see the topic I have opened on this board). It may have to do with the fact that when you retrieve the data you have to do stripslashes, but I'm still working on that 😉