Postgresql storing a photo in bytea

[Anon]

I am working on a website that stores pictures and I have been having trouble getting them to store in the database. What I use to do with postgresql is store pictures a TEXT type and just base64_encode them before storing and base64_decode before sending the pictures to the client. Now with the new bytea datatype that hack just doesn't seem right. So I can use the hack with a bytea datatype and it works fine. I can't seem to get it to work without base64.<br>
Any ideas?
Thanks
Lateef

[[deleted]]

This encoding/decoding thing is one of the reasons why you should simply not store images in a database.

You should very seriously consider writing the images where they belong: in files on the filesystem.
There are no valid reasons for storing images in a database.

PS remember that you cannot send binary data through a query directly, you must escape the binary characters (addslashes) to be able to put the binary data in a query.

[Anon]

Reasons for storing images in a database:
1) When the database gets backedup so does the images.
2) Databases are much easier to work with than the filesystem.
3) Any applications that need access to the images don't also have to have access to the filesystem and the database.

Now (meow) those are a couple off the top of my head. Whenever I work with the existing application which stores images on the file system I find more reasons.

When I store the images I do use addslashes but for some reason I am having trouble getting the data to the picture page.

[Anon]

I disagree when you say images in a DB are easier to work with, and obviously you are having problems with it.

Backups can be done on the filesystem just as easy as backing up the DB's.

It is quicker to retreive the images from the filesystem, less likely to become corrupt, smaller and has less server overhead. Also, you don't have to write a script every time you want to get an image.

just IMHO

[[deleted]]

1) ... and when you backup the rest of the system, all files are backedup too. Where's the advantage in making your database backup a good 900% larger?

2) Ah, ofcourse, to use a database you only have to open a database connection, login, formulate a query, parse the query, execute it, retreive the results and decode the image.
That's much easier than just calling fpassthru() on a file.

3) Any application that accesses binary data in a database already accesses the filesystem, but through a clunky, overhead-happy interface called a database.

I know it sounds very cool, slik and clean to use a database for storing files, but sooner or later you'll find that you're just doing things the hard way, and sooner or later you'll run into simple problems like:
If you store more than 2GB of binaries in a database, you run into a filesize limit on your database tables.
If you run a sequencial scan on a 1GB table to find one image, you loose all performance.

Just the fact that you had to use base64 to get the images in there in the firstplace really spells BAD IDEA