Serving static files dynamically though MYSQ/PHP

[goobers]

Hi,

I'm having a bit of a problem figuring something out. I have a website that allows users to upload files, (lets say those files are images). I then take the images, generate three thumbails, a text file containing the metadata, and a PNG version of the image.

Now I would like to serve the files from a static web server (lighthttpd). How would I go about handling this process. I currently am stuck at the following:

1. Should I have the form post to the static server (which then will run both apache and lighthttpd). Apache will process the images, and the static server will serve them.

2. How can I keep track of where the images are... what If I add new drives into the system, do I store the image drive paths in the database ? If so, how can the main web server know what the static url is? or should i hardcode http://static.example.com/image1.jpg and store that in the database ?

3. If I wanted to add another static web server, which would be the best way to go about doing it?

Essentially, I am looking for the best way to process the user uploaded files, which requires php, then serve them from a static web server, and storing their locations in the database. Any insight on how I can acheive this with maximum flexibility (i.e. a potential change in domain name) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[sneakyimp]

I'm not sure what you mean about 'have the form post to the static server'.

As for the file locations, there are a couple of things you can do to make the file locations flexible. I would highly recommend defining a constant for the location of these files:

define('IMAGE_FILE_DIRECTORY', '/var/www/some/server/directory');

And then all you have to do is store a filename in the database. When you fetch a $record from the database, you can get its file location like this:

$file_location = IMAGE_FILE_DIRECTORY . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $record['image_filename'];

If you change the location of the images to some other hard drive, you just redefine the constant to the new location.

NOTE: if you put all the images in the same directory, they have to all have different names. You should either a) guarantee that filenames are unique or b) come up with some kind of scheme to separate them into folders. If they go into folders, you either need an algorithm to determine the folder name from some data, or you need to store that partial folder in the db too.