images into tables

Anon

How do I insert an image into a sql table?
I need this for a website that I am building that is database driven

toma42

insert into table 'path/to/image'

It'll be a lot easier to code and maintain if you just store the path to the image instead of the image.

Anon

While this will be easier to code - it will be hard to maintain.

If you store complete images in database, then all you need to backup the content of your site is a raw dump of the database. With path/to/images you also have to make an archive of the images along with the DB backup. Also you'll never be sure that what the images file you have match what is in the database (ie path/to/image in database but the image is not there, or image being there but no link to it in the database).

And as far as performances go, you can use caching to only pull the image out of the database once, then save it to a temp dir and then serve the image there in the future.

toma42

er, how do you back up your php files then? They need to be backed up the same way your php files do.

And as far as performances go, you can use caching to only pull the image out of the database once, then save it to a temp dir and then serve the image there in the future.

Yea, that's what I said to do but not to take the wastful step of putting the images into the database.

Anon

I found a link off of www.thickbook.com that was a zdnet article talking specifically about this very issue. I have used it in my own tests and the code (both the insert and retrieval code) works very good for the site I'm playing around with.

http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/stories/articles/0,4413,2643888,00.html

Anon

Hi! Store images into database table is not so difficult.
The trick is to define a column as blob type, so you can store in this column binary data (read from your image file).

You can retrive it with a simple sql query, and you display the image with something like Header( "Content-type: $type").
This is a shorp and inaccurate summary of the article Binary Data + MySQL + PHP.
I suggest to read it. (http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/florian19991014.php3?print_mode=1)
Bye!

Anon

Actually I don't need to backup the PHP files, as I'm the only one editiong them, and then they're always edited locally then upload on the server - hence my local PHP files are always up to date. Pictures, on the other hand, can be edited by anyone so I'd have to backup them separatly from the database.

Yea, that's what I said to do but not to take the wastful step of putting the images into the database.

There's no waste - MySQL is made to handle very large databases (dozens of G😎 and has no limit on blob sizes. I've 35 MB database with 20 MB of pictures, it's working like a charm. And I'm always sure that all the pictures listed in my database are actually there and can be generated whenever I need them. I wouldn't go as far as storing 10 MB files in there, but 100 KB pictures, that's smaller than many large text fields you can store sometimes.