Uploading images and how to store image path?

michaelkirby

Hi,

I'm new to PHP and learning still, so help is much appreciated.

I have a script to upload files or images to a folder specified.

What I want to do now is to upload a picture and then save the path to the database but don't really know how. I know this is best practice rather than storing the image in the DB.

Can any one help me out with some code to insert the path to the database?

Help is greatly appreciated!

bradgrafelman

How much do you already know? Can you connect to a database using PHP? Execute a query? Form a basic INSERT query?

You also might want to specify which DBMS you're using (I'm guessing MySQL, but there are plenty of other choices out there).

michaelkirby

Hi,

Yea i can connect to a db and execute queries. I'm using MySQL as the DBMS.

So essentially I have the basics but just don;t know how to store the path and insert it into the database.

I guess it would be storing into a variable or something but really don't know.

Any help would be much appreciated

bradgrafelman

How are you handling the file upload? Storing the path to a file in your DB is nothing more than INSERT'ing a normal string (the string being a path).

michaelkirby

Hi,

This is the code I have for uploading a file,

It uploads to a file on my computer inside where my code is stored.

So from this what how do I get the path into a variable to store in the db?

if ($_FILES["file"]["error"] > 0)
    {
    echo "Return Code: " . $_FILES["file"]["error"] . "<br />";
    }
  else
    {
    echo "Upload: " . $_FILES["file"]["name"] . "<br />";
    echo "Type: " . $_FILES["file"]["type"] . "<br />";
    echo "Size: " . ($_FILES["file"]["size"] / 1024) . " Kb<br />";
    echo "Temp file: " . $_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"] . "<br />";

if (file_exists("upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]))
  {
  echo $_FILES["file"]["name"] . " already exists. ";
  }
else
  {
  move_uploaded_file($_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"],
  "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]);//change to Timp folder
  // "C:/upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]);//change to Timp folder
  //echo "Stored in: " . "C:/xampp/htdocs/Timp/UserLogin/upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"];
   echo "Stored in: " . "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"];
  }
}

bradgrafelman

Okay, so your image path is:

"upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]

Simply use that string in an INSERT query to store the path in a database.

EDIT: Also, when posting PHP code, please use the board's [noparse]

..

[/noparse] bbcode tags as they make your code much easier to read and analyze.

michaelkirby

Ok that makes sense.

Would I then have to put that into a variable e.g.

$imagepath = "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]

insert into ....... $imagepath?

and could I put this insert statement at the end of the upload script?

bradgrafelman

michaelkirby wrote:
Would I then have to put that into a variable e.g.

$imagepath = "upload/" . $_FILES["file"]["name"]

You could if you want, or you could just use the string pieces themselves without creating another variable. For example, I like using [man]sprintf/man for queries that take up a lot of space (visually), e.g.:

$sql = sprintf("INSERT INTO myTable (path, name) VALUES ('%s', '%s')",
    "upload/" . mysql_real_escape_string($_FILES["file"]["name"]),
    mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['name'])
);

michaelkirby wrote:
and could I put this insert statement at the end of the upload script?

You could put it anywhere you want (though you might want to wait until you validate the upload and successfully moved it to its permanent location).

michaelkirby

ok kl I will give this a try and see how it goes!

Thanks for your time!!

I will post if I get it working!